Image Description: Picture of the physical copy of, Turtles All the Way Down, sat on a barstool against a blurred brick backdrop.

This summer I had the privilege of reading John Green’s new book, Turtles All the Way Down. The book is about a young woman who is investigating the disappearance of local billionaire Russell Pickett alongside her “Best and Most Fearless Friend” Daisy, an investigation which will bring her closer to Pickett’s son, Davis. The main character, Aza, also has OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and anxiety. Aza is your typical high-school junior who tries to be a “good daughter, a good friend, [and] a good student” (as described on the inside cover). She has an old car named Harold, she’s thinking about college, and she even gets to experience a little romance – all while dealing with ever-tightening thought spirals.

Green’s latest publication is a fascinating development in stories of mental illness. He features a young female protagonist of color who has a mental illness that, while it features heavily in her story (due to the inherent nature of obsessive thoughts), the plot does not revolve around her OCD. Aza’s story, however, does take into account her struggle with OCD, and her realistic experiences with thought spirals feature prominently in the book. I was drawn to Green’s novel because I have struggled with OCD-like tendencies in the past as a result of my own anxiety, and I was interested to see how realistically Aza’s experiences were portrayed. In my opinion, Aza’s story does life with mental illness justice.

In the first pages of the novel Aza speaks about her disgust towards the process of eating and digesting food, and by extension the microbes in her stomach, and how there are trillions of microbes on the face of the Earth, and suddenly she can “feel them living and breeding and dying in and on” her (3), and the ensuing panic.

Aza falls in love with a boy and has a boyfriend, has a good relationship with her mother, and also has OCD. While her mental illness often interrupts her life, it does not stop her from pursuing it. She insists that she has “a normal-ish life” (93). She goes to school, she gets good grades, spends time with her mother, eats meals, watches television, and reads. She falls in love with the billionaire’s son, Davis, and they date for most of the book. Aza’s mother even embarrasses her in front of Davis.

Green also talks quite frankly about the nature of medications and therapy related to mental illness. At the beginning of the book, Aza talks about taking her medications – irregularly – and attempting to use her therapy exercises. She talks about how she feels that she is not in control of her own narrative and expresses that her thought patterns are interrupting her daily life. Green emphasizes these thoughts in italics, creating the invasive voice that peppers Aza’s thoughts:

“I don’t think you changed it. I think this is last night’s Band-Aid.

Well, it’s not last night’s Band-Aid because I definitely changed it at lunch.

Did you, though?

I think so.

You THINK so?

I’m pretty sure.” (128)

The italic lines paired with the straight-text lines serves to both tie and sever the connection between Aza’s rational thoughts and her obsessive thoughts. She tries to calm herself by validating her own actions, but her obsessive thoughts insist on correcting her. This passage ends with her obsessive voice saying “YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT” and Aza turns to her friends for validation of her actions, asking if she went to the bathroom before lunch to change her Band-Aid. Regardless of their response that yes, she did go, she always goes, Aza’s thoughts immediately jump to infection. She changes the Band-Aid again, but the idea of infection does not leave her mind, and she “hate[s] herself. Hate[s] this” (130). She repeats this action twice in the next ten minutes of action.

“I wanted to tell her that I was getting better, because that was supposed to be the narrative of illness: It was a hurdle you jumped over, or a battle you won. Illness is a story told in the past tense.” (85)

WARNING – SPOILERS AHEAD!

While the immediate struggles with OCD – thought spirals, panic attacks – are evident in the book, Aza’s story becomes real to me when her mental illness begins to take over her life. She loses her friend Daisy due to a misunderstanding, falls behind in her schoolwork, has trouble keeping up with conversations, causes her mother to worry, and essentially sabotages her relationship with Davis due to her invasive thoughts that tell her “everyone knows you’re not normal” (156).

Aza’s concerns are sometimes invalidated by other characters, such as when her friends tell her to calm down, or when her mother tells her she wishes she could stop the pain, but the novel highlights the destructive nature of mental illness that goes unchecked. At the climax of the novel, Aza’s concerns about the microbes get so bad that she begins to drink hand sanitizer. Her intrusive thoughts begin to convince her that she will feel better if she drinks the hand sanitizer. After getting into a car accident, Aza is forced to spend a few days in the hospital due to a lacerated liver – her worst nightmare, in terms of the microbes. The tightening thought spiral finally consumes her when, in a panic attack preceded by a full page of italic dialogue, she drinks enough hand sanitizer that she vomits.

However, Aza does end up solving the mystery of the billionaire’s disappearance, quite by accident. She and Daisy reconcile their friendship and Aza makes a better attempt to take care of herself and her mental illness. Following this, she relates that “I kept going. I got better without ever quite getting well” (281). She and Davis break up, but she ends the novel highlighting the importance of your first love: “You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for life, that love is both how you become a person, and why” (285).

SPOILERS END – READ BELOW

Green compares Aza’s thought spirals to a myth that gives the novel its title. When told by a scientist that the Earth has a long and complex history of evolution, a woman replies that the Earth is actually a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle. When asked by the scientist what the turtle was standing on, the woman replies that it is standing on another giant turtle – it is “turtles all the way down” (245). Daisy tells Aza that she’s “trying to find a turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that’s not how it works” (245) – it’s turtles all the way down.

“Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.” (284)

The thing I love about this novel is how realistically it portrays life with mental illness. While my experience with anxiety is incomparable to Aza’s story, there are parts of it that I do relate to – the obsessive thought spirals, the medical anxiety, the distraction from daily life. Aza’s story is tied to, but not dominated by, her mental illness. She is able to experience a normal teenage life, but her obsessions and compulsions also reveal the severity of untreated mental illness. She is not treated as a hero, she is not pitied, and she is not invalidated or talked down to due to her mental illness. Her mental illness is also not a battle or a challenge to be overcome – Aza has to learn to live with it, knowing she cannot truly “beat it.” She is merely a teenager battling normal teenage life while also living with and handling mental illness.

Being an English major, it’s refreshing to read a novel where the main character and the story not categorized by mental illness. Rather, Green creates a relatable character in Aza without denying her a voice. Aza’s experience of life as a teenager with OCD is a reality for many people, a reality that has been denied a voice or a place on the page for many years. Of course, I’m also a sucker for a sappy John-Green style ending about teenage love, and even though Aza and Davis do not end up together, I’m happy to see him validate young love – something that, personally, always seems out of reach when you’re dealing with anxiety. This story gives me hope that someday I, and the millions of people affected by anxiety disorders, can live fulfilling lives and find happiness – without being categorized, invalidated, or pitied for having a mental illness.

Rating: 5/5 Stars.

“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t.” (290)