I would recommend this book to anyone who would read just for the writing.
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Miles Halter (or 'pudge') is in search of his great perhaps and is interested in famous people's last words. When he moves to Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama, he meets Alaska Young through his roommate chip (or 'colonel') who introduces them. Pudge has his first cigarette, first drink, first bufriedo, gets his first girlfriend, and becomes part of all the pranks.
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Alaska Young is beautiful, witty, funny, a book hoarder and there's never a dull moment with her but she's also incredibly screwed up. She's got a personality with a mystery to it. She challenges pudge to answer an enigmatic question about 'Simon Bolivars' last words about getting out of the Labyrinth of Suffering.
'She loved mysteries so much that she became one'
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Pudge wants to know her, he wants to love her and as the story progresses he realizes that she's a very complicated girl. And nothing can ever be the same again for him.
'She finds him cute but she's got a boy friend'.
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I would have enjoyed this book much more if I read it in my teens, nonetheless it is beautifully written YA fiction and is all about friendship, hearbreaks, self-discovery, sadness, loss and trying to find the answer to getting out of the labyrinth of suffering.
"Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love, or somewhere you're afraid to go. It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters."
"If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane"
"I like connecting an action with remembering"
"At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze"
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