Format: Paperback
Published by: Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780141346090
Pages: 272
Price: 350 INR
“Laugh-out-loud funny…A coming-of-age American road trip that is at once a satire of and tribute to its many celebrated predecessors.” – The Horn Book
Colin Singleton finds himself to be the central character in John Green’s novel that readers worldwide deem the least favorite of the lot. He formulates his way through the story in third person.
Colin has a weird fetish: he can’t help falling in love. However, each time he does so, it has to be with a girl called ‘Katherine’. No, Catherine won’t do and neither will Kate. Just plain and simple Katherine. What’s even more incredulous is that he has been in a relationship with all these Katherines 19 times (yes, you read it right) and each and every one of them has ended up dumping his poor ass. When the 19th while – on a fugging road trip with fugging ten thousand dollars in his pocket. So, with a friend riding shotgun alongside him, he goes on a journey that first hints at self-discovery. But what Colin is attempting to do on the road is to come up with ‘The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Probability’. In layman terms, it will predict how long two people would be able to last in a relationship, given certain criteria. Imagine what people might pay to know that!
John Green has taken an unusual route and brought forward Hassan Harbish. ‘A Sunni Muslim but not a terrorist’, Hassan surprisingly is as funny as any sidekick can get. The author has written the relationship between them so beautifully that we can predict the conflicts that are going to happen between the two of them, before it actually happens. The chemistry between them is true to nature. Be as it may, Colin and Hassan stay for a few weeks in Gutshot, Tennessee. With a population of 864, two more boys are added to the town. This is where the pace of the story begins to increase.
Amidst the narrative, there are occasional flashbacks to Colin’s life where the reader glances upon the various Katherines. However, his opinion of them is obviously a bit biased, so one can’t help but take his side a little.
The book cover needs a special mention for its bright red look. A hand holding a bulb (within which the name is shown), it symbolizes the aspect of an idea. Remember how cartoon show characters had a sudden burst of inspiration which is shown through a lit bulb? That’s exactly what I mean!
While ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ is my least favorite among everything that Green has written, readers popularly vote this to be their least favorite. Whatever the case may be, there is some amount of satisfaction that one gets in the end as we see whether things work out for Colin or not and his incredibly complex theorem.
Overall Rating: 6.5 / 10
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