An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

 

Although I feel as though I’m a little too old for this (despite mentions of drugs, sex, and swearing – okay maybe not TOO old?!), I know that this is the kind of book I know I would have absolutely loved when I was younger. The kind of book where a character takes something trivial and exaggerates it into huge profundity. In this case, the need to fill up the hole of a break up with a ‘replacement’.

One of the issues Colin explores in this novel is the existential crisis of needing to matter. It is an idea that I have struggled with for a long time, and many others probably have too – the idea of wanting to be someone and make your mark on the world. As Colin muses, “I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter”. You want to matter so that you aren’t simply slowly forgotten until eventually everyone who knew you is gone and then it is as if you never existed in the first place. Nothing but a forgotten being in “the ground”, “where we all go”.

I guess this book has taught me that you don’t have to do something grandiose and genius in order to matter. Small changes, like Hollis working extra and hiding the fact that her company was going bust in order to not have to fire people and help out the ‘oldsters’ with their pensions. Or even telling a story that’ll  change someone’s perspective or life in the most infinitesimal way, as Colin discovers. Even doing something  meaningful with your life, doing something rather than “just sucking food and water and money out of the world” as Hassan realises.

“There’s no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion”. In the end the future will “swallow us up” and erase everything, and no matter who you were or what level of fame you’ve reached in your life, eventually it won’t matter. Even the greatest philosopher we know of today will eventually be forgotten – and that’s sort of comforting! (I think…)

Colin feels frustrated at not being able to calculate his theorem, he feels he’s not genius enough. But the fact of the matter is, we can never scientifically or mathematically predict the future (whether that is predicting who will be the dumpee /dumper or otherwise). The past can easily be accounted for and mapped out, but the future (cheesy as this sounds) is what you make of it! And I’m glad Colin had this realisation.

Just like the future, personality is not set in stone either. Lindsey feels like a chameleon. She is a different person around different people. But thinking about it, we’re all like that really – smiley and hard-working around teachers (well…), obedient around our parents and our wildest versions of ourselves with our friends. And this brings up the question: who’s the real me? After this realisation Colin feels like everything he knew about himself is gone. But aren’t we all these different versions of ourselves? We simply show a different side to different groups of people – but they all add up to make you you- right? And as the characters in AAOK progress they figure this out too, they can be all these versions of themselves and remake themselves however they like. You can be whoever you want to be.

Even though the Maths was extremely confusing (thank God for the appendix at the end!), I honestly thought An Abundence of Katherines was funny, culturally aware and I loved the little annotations at the bottom. Despite the fact that I’m clearly not the target demographic (age-wise) for this novel, it did give me a lot to think about and I definitely enjoyed it!

Have any of you read AAOK before? What did you think of it? Please let me know!

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back”

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Hasta luego,