Turtles All the Way Down

CW: mental illness, intense thought spirals, self harm, ableism, toxic friendships, parental death, extensive discussion of bacteria and germs, health-related panic/anxiety, intense anxiety, destruction of a dead loved one's memento, vehicular accident

Some but not all of these elements from the story will be openly discussed in the following review.

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I've had this book since sometime in early 2018, if I'm not mistaken. My best friend, who happens to be quite a John Green fan, gifted me a copy and told me that Aza reminded her of me - in no small part because the character and I have similar mental health issues. She was excited by the prospect of sharing this book with me, and I wanted to make her happy, but... Well, let's just say my brain and John Green's writing style are not the most compatible creatures.

I read maybe one chapter, got very slightly triggered by how hard Aza's thought patterns hit with relatability, and wandered away. Then I came back to it a year later, got bored instead of upset, and once again wandered away. I never had the heart to say this to my friend, so any time she'd ask I'd just shrug it off as having other things I'd already started reading. “I keep meaning to read it, but...” Eventually, she stopped asking. Eventually, I stopped thinking about it, until late 2021 (shoutout to those of you reading this shortly after it goes live) when I decided to prune my Currently Reading shelf.

There Turtles All the Way Down sat, staring at me - reminding me that it had yet to be finished. How many years has it been? I wondered, almost doubting my best friend still cared whether I'd read it anymore. She's probably forgotten. What does it matter? But honestly? It did matter. Of course it did! If I DNF'd the book, that would mean I gave up on something important to a person I adore. It would mean never knowing just why parallels had been drawn between myself and Aza Holmes.

Ultimately, curiosity won. I mean, that's obvious, right? Here I am, having read the book, writing a rambling review with unnecessary backstory.........

First and foremost: while I can tolerate it far better than anticipated in large doses, I do not get along well with the writing style in Turtles. Though I normally enjoy a story told in conversational prose, this goes just a little too far and feels a tch forced at times - like too much effort has been put into making a tense moment or a dramatic moment or an emotional... You get the point. It just feels too much like, every time he wanted to portray a specific emotion, Green changed the way sentences were structured and shifted Aza's narrative voice. This worked a few times during her thought spirals, but otherwise felt more like a gimmick.

That said, I did quite like Aza as a character. In terms of anxiety and OCD rep, she was great... with some caveats.

Let me start out by saying I have the kind of anxiety and intensity of OCD that actually impedes my life. Like Aza, the idea of taking meds terrifies me because I don't want to lose myself along the way. (Unlike Aza, I don't have the privilege of affording regular visits with a therapist or a prescription anyway. Welcome to American healthcare.) Also like Aza, I often feel as if I'm not a real person, just a pointless thing with no control; can't always tell memories from imagination; fixate uncontrollably on certain topics; have intrusive thoughts which urge self-damaging behaviour (but not outright self harm like she partook); hate myself; am extremely sensitive; and am prone to dissociative episodes. Unlike her, my OCD and anxiety focus more on patterns and meaningless facts and thinking some cosmic force is out there to torture me than fearing germs and thinking my body is taking control of my mind.

My experiences are different, but as I read this book, I kept thinking wow, there's finally a character whose thoughts work the same way as mine. I don't know how it feels to be so completely consumed with a singular, germ-based fear that drinking hand sanitizer seems like a smart idea - and wow am I ever grateful for that - but I know the thought spiral very well. It's not a constant fear for me, but rather any time I have a concerning symptom my brain decides it's the worst case scenario. Considering I have chronic migraines, I can't even begin to count how many times I've wasted literal hours googling strokes, aneurysms, brain cancer, etc. just out of a compulsive need to reassure myself that it's merely a migraine. But for the most part, my compulsive internet deep dives are driven by my need to connect everything in a sort of pattern and my fixation on facts. For me, it's less often health-related wiki articles and more often random crap I want to fact check from a story I read, a show I watched, even a thing I wrote myself. And by “want to fact check,” I mean help me, I can't stop digging through details on fan sites and wikis because I swear there was one time Jughead held a dossier on Kurtz and it had Kurtz's real name listed on it but none of the articles or wiki pages mention his name and omg there's a screenshot but it's blurry I have to go load this episode to see what it says oh no it's still blurry I have to find a collection of screenshots oh God it's just a single frame and I can't read it fine whatever maybe I can guess the shapes... I can't guess the shapes, I'm pathetic and I have failed, and I need to restart the search and try again...

Likewise, I relate strongly to Aza's preference for interacting over text-based communication. Interacting is hard in person - draining. It's so much easier to fake thinking like a “normal” person when there's a buffer of the delete key and less immediate pressure to interact. But I don't relate to her obsession with the germs gathered from kissing etc. If anything, I should be more concerned with germs because I'm very much that person who has no qualms sharing the same straw with a person I feel very close to - or nibbling the same food or using the same chapstick. (Interestingly, if I don't feel close to or safe with someone, those actions repulse me because of the ick factor... but I think that might be normal?)

But I digress, for fear I'm oversharing without a clear point - or perhaps just failing to make my point. What I'm trying to say is that this book makes me feel seen. It makes my little, mentally ill heart get all twitterpated at the idea of actually having a character available whose thought patterns are fully relatable. Even when the plot meandered and the writing style grated my nerves like they were a block of cheddar at a taco bar, I didn't want to stop reading because I felt at home in Aza's head.

That said, I did mention a caveat. And here it is: I think Green tries too hard to portray the way Aza feels othered by her own mind. At times, it feels less like OCD or anxiety and more like a cliche portrayal of stereotypical schizophrenia. Now, personally, I know what he was aiming for. When I try to explain intrusive thoughts to my friends, I use the exact same method because it really does feel like being of two minds: the real me and the one who's being a total jerk to me, trying to take control. But I had to explain to my friends that it's not literally a conversation in my own head but rather a way to articulate the dissonance between me and the compulsions. I don't recall this distinction being made by Aza - or, if it was, it didn't stick - so I worry that people who don't have this particular mental illness won't understand that we aren't literally yelling at disembodied, evil voices that are being mean to us and trying to distract us from reality.

I fear I'm not articulating well, so here's an example:

There was blood. Not a lot, but blood. Faintly pink. It isn???t infected. It bleeds because it hasn???t scabbed over. But it could be. It isn???t. Are you sure? Did you even clean it this morning? Probably. I always clean it. Are you sure? Oh, for fuck???s sake.

Me: I'm gonna just transcribe this podcast and it'll take a week at most!
My brain: Oh sweet summer child...
Me: No.
My brain: Yes! You're gonna fact check ALL the things. Waste hours on it! Days! Weeks!
Me: I don't wanna, tho.