Turtles All the Way Down

Across the table from me, Mychal Turner was scribbling in a yellow-paper notebook. Our lunch table was like a long-running play on Broadway: The cast changed over the years, but the roles never did. Mychal was The Artsy One. He was talking with Daisy Ramirez, who d played the role of my Best and Most Fearless Friend since elementary school, but I couldn t follow their conversation over the noise of all the others.

What was my part in this play? The Sidekick. I was Daisy s Friend, or Ms. Holmes s Daughter. I was somebody s something.

I felt my stomach begin to work on the sandwich, and even over everybody s talking, I could hear it digesting, all the bacteria chewing the slime of peanut butter the students inside of me eating at my internal cafeteria. A shiver convulsed through me.

Didn t you go to camp with him? Daisy asked me.

With who?

Davis Pickett, she said.

Yeah, I said. Why?

Aren t you listening? Daisy asked. I am listening, I thought, to the cacophony of my digestive tract. Of course I d long known that I was playing host to a massive collection of parasitic organisms, but I didn t much like being reminded of it. By cell count, humans are approximately 50 percent microbial, meaning that about half of the cells that make you up are not yours at all. There are something like a thousand times more microbes living in my particular biome than there are human beings on earth, and it often seems like I can feel them living and breeding and dying in and on me. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and tried to control my breathing. Admittedly, I have some anxiety problems, but I would argue it isn t irrational to be concerned about the fact that you are a skin-encased bacterial colony.

Mychal said, His dad was about to be arrested for bribery or something, but the night before the raid he disappeared. There s a hundred-thousand-dollar reward out for him.

And you know his kid, Daisy said.

Knew him, I answered.

I watched Daisy attack

A thoughtful look at mental illness and a debilitating obsessive-compulsive disorder that doesn t ask but makes you feel the constant struggles of its main character.   USA Today

Turtles delivers a lesson that we so desperately need right now: Yes, it is okay not to be okay . John Green has crafted a dynamic novel that is deeply honest, sometimes painful, and always thoughtful.   Mashable

Green does more than write about; he endeavours to write inside . No matter where you are on the spiral and we re all somewhere Green s novel makes the trip, either up or down, a less solitary experience.   The Globe and Mail

This novel is by far [Green s] most difficult to read. It s also his most astonishing. . . . So surprising and moving and true that I became completely unstrung. . . . One needn t be suffering like Aza to identify with it. One need only be human.   Jennifer Senior, The New York Times

Green s most authentic and most ambitious work to date.   Bustle

An existential teenage scream.   Vox

Funny, clever, and populated with endearing characters.   Entertainment Weekly

An incredibly powerful tale of the pain of mental illness, the pressures of youth, and coming of age when you feel like you re coming undone.   Shelf Awareness

  A richly rewarding read the most mature of Green s work to date and deserving of all the accolades that are sure to come its way.   Booklist

  In an age where troubling events happen almost weekly, this deeply empathetic novel about learning to live with demons and love one s imperfect self is timely and important.   Publishers Weekly

  A deeply resonant and powerful novel that will inform and enlighten readers even as it breaks their hearts. A must-buy.   School Library Journal
 
Praise for John Green

- 50 million books in print worldwide -
 
#1 New York Times Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller
#1 USA Today Bestseller
#1 International Bestseller

Michael L. Printz Award Winner
Michael L. Printz Honor Winner
 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
 TIME 100 Most Influential People
Forbes Celebrity 100
NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels
 TIME Magazine's 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time

Critical acclaim for The Fault in Our Stars:
 
Damn near genius . . . The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness. Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
 
This is a book that breaks your heart not by wearing it down, but by making it bigger until it bursts. The Atlantic
 
Remarkable . . . A pitch-perfect, elegiac comedy.   USA Today

[Green s] voice is so compulsively readable that it defies categorization. You will be thankful for the little infinity you spend inside this book.   NPR.org

John Green deftly mixes the profound and the quotidian in this tough, touching valentine to the human spirit.   The Washington Post 
 
[Green] shows us true love two teenagers helping and accepting each other through the most humiliating physical and emotional ordeals and it is far more romantic than any sunset on the beach.   New York Times Book Review