An abundance of katherines

Nineteen break-ups, every one of them with a girl named Katherine, send a teenage prodigy out of town with his best friend and a theorem he hopes will explain love. John Green runs the road trip through a small Tennessee town and fills the margins with footnotes, anagrams and mathematics, but the comedy keeps circling back to whether being clever is the same as being interesting. The friendship between Colin and Hassan does most of the real work. What this book does well: • A coming-of-age story built on friendship at least as much as on romance • Footnotes, wordplay and a running mathematical conceit woven into the narrative • Dialogue-heavy chapters that keep the humour quick and the pace light • Suited to teenage readers and to adults who enjoy witty contemporary fiction A good choice for young adult readers and for John Green's wider audience, available in English at Boipoka.