AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES BY JOHN GREEN

John Green won a Printz award for Looking for Alaska, and his second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, was an honour book for the same award, and again, the award was well-deserved.

An Abundance of Katherines is the story of Colin Singleton, a child prodigy past his prime who has just graduated from high school and has just been dumped by the 19th girl he has ever dated. The weird thing is, all 19 of the girls have been named Katherine.

Colin is heartbroken, so he sets off on a roadtrip with his best friends Hassan. They end up staying in a tiny town called Gutshot, with a girl named Lindsey Lee Wells and her mother Hollis. Lindsey is unlike any other girl Colin has met, and it doesn't take Colin and Hassan long to meet and get involved with all the quirky characters in Gutshot. At the same time, Colin is trying to work out a mathematical formula that will be able to predict how long a relationship will last and, when it ends, who will be the dumper and who will be the dumpee. As the story progresses, Colin starts to realise that sometimes things can't be predicted, and that maybe he will never be able to fix his formula.

John Green seems to always write books with a male, first-person narrator. Colin, in this book, is realistic, appropriately flawed and also just a little bit mysterious, keeping the reader reading until the last pages. Lindsey Lee Wells is also an intriguing character, so much more than the outgoing, slightly immature teenager that Colin first meets.

This book was well-written, and actually very interesting to me, despite the maths! There is an appendix at the end explaining all the maths in the book (which is actually real and does work, though results obviously may vary) written by Daniel Biss, a mathematician. If you have any moderate understanding of maths, then I would actually highly recommend reading the appendix as it is very interesting, despite the topic.

Unfortunately, An Abundance of Katherines is difficult, if not impossible to get in Australia, but it is cheap from Amazon (where I got my copy) and it is worth paying the postage to get such a book.

Butterflies: 8 out of 10
Recommended for people: over 14 who have at least a moderate understanding of maths and enjoy books about roadtrips and friendships and love
Warnings: swearing, sex (not graphic) and a bit of drinking, but they are not major plot features.