To say I was excited to finally read Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan would be a huge understatement. On Tuesday morning I was out of bed, hours before I needed to be for work, and off to buy the book. The second I returned home, I started reading and had trouble putting it down.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is spot on. That is the best way I can think to describe this novel. That exact phrase entered my head as I finished the last sentence. Everything about it, from the writing styles to the characters to the theme, is done exactly right. To be overly cliche, I thought this book was done perfectly.
The writing style is very interesting because obviously there is two authors. Rather then write together, they each took on a Will Grayson and told the story for their perspective. Green’s intellectual but still young style of writing is what made me fall in love with his books so I was happy to see his section having that same style. Having not read anything by Levithan, I’m not sure if he using the same style all the time or not but honestly, at first it threw me off. There is a huge lack of capitalization, grammar, and dialog is done in a play fashion. After a chapter or so, I got used to it though and ended up really liking it. Because his character was supposed to have depression problem, I guess it kind of made sense to me that his thought process would be completely different so how he narrates should be as well. Plus, the two styles made it very easy not to get lost between the two characters.
Speaking of characters, the interesting this about this novel is that even though the two Will Grayson are the narrators, the main character, to a point is Tiny. All three characters go through personal challenges. Furthermore, this is probably one of the first books I have read that the main character (or in this case two of the three main characters) are homosexual. For the tags I had seen on websites about the book, I knew that this was going to be the case. It was interesting to have one character be completely open and the other go through coming out. Plus it is cool to see authors pushing the boundary on coming up with characters. I think that a lot of authors, even if they have characters that are completely different, end up always having them in similar relationships. Like when someone writes boy meets girls, they kind of stick to that in most their books. Variety is good. Plus, in today’s society of same sex rights still not existing in some places, it is awesome to see popular authors pushing the bounds. Hopefully it opens some people’s eyes.
One thing that I found particularly clever about this book is how the play and it’s theme parrallels the theme of the book. At the same time Tiny’s realizes he has to change the focal point of the play, I realized that this book is about more than the characters. Green and Levithan were not trying to tell the story of Tiny or the story of the two Will Graysons. They were using them to tell a greater story.
Again, I have to say this book is spot on. It lived up to all the great reviews I have heard about it so far and I have no doubt they will keep coming. I have a feeling Green and Levithan have lots of awards coming their way soon. They deserve every one of them.
