Margos Spuren

Vorlage:Infobox Book Paper Towns is the third young adult novel by John Green, published in October 2008 by Dutton Books. It debuted at number 5 on the New York Times bestseller list for children's books.

Plot summary

High school senior Quentin Jacobsen (known to his friends as "Q") has been in love with his neighbor, the mysterious, beautiful, and adventuresome Margo Roth Spiegelman for as long as he can remember. So when one night she appears at his window to ask for his help in playing revenge pranks, he can't refuse. The two travel to Margo's ex-best friend's house, where Margo's boyfriend is cheating on her, along with her boyfriend's house, the house of an old bully, and Sea World, where Margo and Q dance together to an old song playing on the loudspeaker. At the end of the night, Margo leaves Q with a hug and says "I will miss hanging out with you".

The next day at school, Q is hardly surprised that Margo isn't there. But when no one sees her for days, Q and his friends Radar and Ben begin searching for the clues Margo had apparently left for Q, including a poster on her window, parts of the poem "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, and an abandoned minimall where she wrote stories from her childhood and explored, with the help of Margo's best friend, Lacey. Based on the clues Margo left behind, Q, Radar, Ben, and Lacey believe that Margo has killed herself. Upon Q discovering a comment from Margo on the fictional website "Omnictionary", the four friends skip graduation and drive for hours to upstate New York, where they find Margo in an old and rundown store building in Agloe, New York, a so-called "paper town" which originated as a copyright trap on Esso maps, writing in her black notebook that she had since she was ten containing her stories and plans. There, she explains to Q how she always hated Florida and was going to leave after graduation anyway, but after finding out about her boyfriend she carried out her plans a couple of weeks early. She did not intend for them to find her.

The book ends with Q and Margo burying her black notebook and laying on the grass talking of paper towns, and paper people. Knowing that nothing could happen with Margo as they are headed in different directions, Q kisses her in the parking lot just before they leave each other.

Reviews

A School Library Journal review says of the book:

Q is a great social outcast main character who sometimes thinks a little too much, but is completely relatable. Though we only really see Margo for the first third of the book, the clues really create her character and give us the feeling she's a complex person. Finding out who Margo is through the things she left behind was a really great way to develop her character.

Rebecca Swain, reviewing Paper Towns for the Orlando Sentinel, says, "Paper Towns has convinced me that jaded adult readers need to start raiding the Teens section at the bookstore. Green, who grew up in Orlando and uses the city as a backdrop for the story, taps into the cadence of teenage life with sharp and funny writing, but transcends age with deeper insights."

Booklist awarded Paper Towns a starred review, praising it as "wonderfully witty" and "deeply thoughtful and insightful".

Film adaptation

John Green announced on his video blog that the movie rights to Paper Towns have been optioned by Mandate Pictures and Mr. Mudd. Green has completed the first draft of the screenplay.