An Abundance of Katherines by John Green- Book Review

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green- Book Review

Title: An Abundance of Katherines

Author: John Green

Publisher: Speak

Publish Date: September 21, 2006

Rating: 5/5

Summary(blurb): When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type of girls is named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog in his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun-- but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship and avenge Dumpees everywhere, and may finally win him the girl. 

**This book review may contain spoilers**

I very recently bought this book at the same secondhand bookstore I always go to, and picked this one up because it was a John Green book (for some reason john green's humor is totally my type) and, when I opened it to a random page, there was a graph of a quadratic equation. I bought it right away, and read it immediately. 

This book is about a prodigy named Colin Singleton, who just graduated from high school and broke up with his 19th girlfriend. All 19(technically 18) girlfriends were named Katherine. Everything starts when Colin's best (and only)(and overweight) friend, Hassan, takes him on a road trip with just the two of them to help Colin feel better. Starting from Chicago they go all the way to Tenessee when they stop by a town called Gutshot to see the purported grave of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (if you didn't know, his death triggered WWI) since Colin knows and likes this kind of nerdy history stuff. 

Soon Colin and Hassan come to know Lindsey Lee Wells, the teenage girl who runs a small store that also gives Franz Ferdinand tours. Conveniently, Lindsey is the same age as Colin and Hassan. Her mother Hollis is the owner of a factory, and nearly the entire village is employed there. Colin and Hassan eventually come to stay at their house, and the majority of the plot happens there. 

The Theorem of Underlying Katherine is a major part of this book which I personally really liked. It grew from Colin's idea that all romantic relationships are graphable, and his attempt to figure out a formula to predict the outcomes of his future relations. Although he initially only starts with a simple function and one variable-- D, for dumper-dumpee scale difference-- with Lindsey's help he comes up with five more variables to make the following equation: 

I actually inputted this equation on Desmos, and after some fiddling, found that plugging in A=13, C=0, H=-1, D=0.03, and P=1 gave me this graph:

Which looked very much like the equation for K-19 (the 19th Katherine), illustrated in the book as follows:

I honestly didn't think the equation would actually work, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out the final equation gave the proper answers it should. The link to the actual graph is here, you can see what I did: 

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/bxvmvtdbcn

Anyway, I loved the graphability of the equation in the book and the deeper meaning in Colin realizing that the future cannot be accurately predicted every time, breaking out from his perception that everything was graphable and math was the answer. Instead of graphs, points, and equations, his notebook began to fill with words, memories, and stories. He developed from a mathy analytic guy to someone who sees the value in stories and can tell them well. The ending scene, the three in the car with Colin experiencing that "feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it", was the happy ending everyone had known would come.  

I loved the characters most of all in this book-- Colin, Hassan, Lindsey, and more. None of them have huge childhood traumas or dark histories or anything, they're all mostly cheerful smart witty people with deep relatable problems that friendship, romance, and companionship can solve. Colin's fears and worries of not mattering enough and not doing well enough for a prodigy are totally understandable, and it helps that Green mentions Colin being unable to accomplish goals, or 'markers', that his father set for him as a kid. The dialogue between the characters reveal John Green's trademark wittiness seen in many of his novels (I haven't read all of them), which I came to love the moment I read The Fault In Our Stars. Colin and Lindsey's slowburn romance was predictable but satisfying, I knew it would happen but I enjoy any slowburn romance and the characters talking and sharing stories in the cave were some of my favorite scenes. 

The only possible drawbacks to this book is that the characters aren't realistic enough or that there's too much math, but I enjoyed both the characters and the math-- so, no disappointing parts of the book for me.

Overall this was a great book which I thoroughly liked, the characters and dialogue were all amazing and the Theorem of Underlying Catherine being actually graphable was the cherry on top. The footnotes (which I didn't talk about in the review but were an amusing part of the story as well) were also enjoyable, and I was very comfortable with all the math and anagramming.   

 

I would recommend this book for grade 7s and up who's comfortable with math equations, there are some swear words in the book but I think the math will be a bigger turn-off for many readers.

Rating: I would give this a 5/5 - a great story with fascinating characters and friendships, predictable but still fulfilling romance at the end, a prodigy who goes off on tangents all the time, and a focus on wordplay and math. Amazing.