An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (25 Books in 25 Days #13)

You know what #13 means? It means that 25 Books in 25 Days is officially half over already! It feels like it’s been doing super fast – and has, indeed, so far been pretty doable. And almost all of them have also qualified for Project Names – including today’s, An Abundance of Katherines (2006) by John Green.

I started watching John Green’s YouTube channel around 2008, and still watch it now and then – it’s called vlogbrothers, and he alternates videos with his brother Hank. This was my entry to Green, and then I read The Fault in Our Stars a couple of years after everybody else read it. Since then, I’ve bought a few of his books, but had yet to read any others. I decided to pick up An Abundance of Katherines because Rachel and I will be talking about YA fiction on the next episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ and I haven’t read a huge amount.

The main character of An Abundance of Katherines is Colin Singleton (not many Colins in fiction, so that was a plus!) who has dated 19 girls called Katherine. Not Kate, not Katie, but Katherine. And he’s only just leaving high school. As we subsequently learn, some of these ‘datings’ lasted rather less an hour, and started when his age was in single digits – but, to his mathematical mind, there must be some meaning to his having only dated Katherines. And to his heart, there has to be a reason that he is always the one who is dumped. He decides to put together a theorem to explain his relationships – and which will predict who will be dumper and who will be dumpee.

Meanwhile, he and his best friend Hassan head off on a road trip – deciding to stop in a small town which claims to have the burial place of Franz Ferdinand, and where he and Hassan can get jobs at a factory making the strings for tampons. Naturally there is also a gang of people their age that they can get involved with – including Lindsey, who captivates Colin.

There are quite a few boxes ticked along the way, and the novel is quite self-consciously quirky, but in an entirely enjoyable way. I rolled my eyes a bit at Colin’s thought process about how women don’t NEED to wear make up and he PREFERS them that way, but he is otherwise an engaging and sympathetic lead. Once a child prodigy, he is struggling to live up to that – and navigating his unpopularity and uncertainty about his future. Hassan is very funny, much more charismatic, but without a clue where his life is heading. Lindsey is entirely too much a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but it was 2006 and perhaps YA authors didn’t know better yet.

It definitely helped that I have an existing fondness for John Green, and I found this a page-turner, enjoying every moment, even while recognising that I’m not really the audience. Someone half my age would doubtless find a lot of solace in this sort of book – I didn’t learn any life lessons, but I had a ball reading it.