Turtles All The Way Down-John Green

Turtles All The Way Down 

John Green is a master when it comes to the genre of Young Adult. His writing is so refined and the emotions so well explained that one can literally feel it all. This book Turtles All The Way Down is his newest one dealing with something which we normally hesitate to discuss- mental illness. John Green himself also suffers from OCD i.e. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, whereby one becomes obsessed with cleanliness that finds germs and bacteria in everything. It's more than just simple Mysophobia.

The Protagonist of this book, Aza Holmes suffers from OCD. She has a habit of pricking a wound on her finger with her nail till it bleeds cause of her fear of infection being in it as she feels that she will die if she does not let the blood out. This simple habit of thinking and overthinking of the wound and the infection and the bacteria push her into a spiral of thoughts which she cannot explain to anyone and from which she has no escape. Even the doctor fails to help her in this regard let alone her mother or friends.

Along with the story of her battle with her mind is another parallel story running where there is prize money for catching a big businessman who is absconding because of non-payment of debt, whose son named Davis was Aza's childhood friend. The story focusses about how Aza along with her friend Daisy tries to rekindle her friendship with Davis again, only to light up a romance between the two.

John Green has done a marvelous job in writing things which revolve even in our minds and have given them words. Reading the problems which people like Aza feel and the attitude of the world towards them makes us introspect about how understanding are we towards people suffering from mental illness. It is my personal favorite of all the books he has written.