Twelve, almost thirteen years ago, it was the summer between middle school and high school. I read Looking For Alaska for the first time, and I really loved it. Over the next several years, I became a fan of John Green’s books. His most recent book, Turtles All The Way Down, came out in 2017, when I was knee deep in first grade and basically stopped reading non-picture books for three and a half years.
With social distancing, I suddenly have a lot more time on my hands to read, and I had access to OverDrive to borrow ebooks from the library, and Turtles All The Way Down was available.
The main character in Turtles All The Way Down, Aza, has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and it has a major impact on her life – she’s constantly worried about getting a C. Diff infection, and has a cut on her finger that she continually breaks open and re-bandages, because she thinks it’s infected. She and her best friend are searching for a missing billionare, and there is $100k in reward money on the line.
The big difference between this and John Green’s other books was that it didn’t strike the same note of funny and heart wrenchingly sad. It was funny, for sure. And there were parts that were painful, where Aza is so
“I changed the Band-Aid, looking carefully at the old one. 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.
“I washed my hands, put on a new Band-Aid, but now I was being pulled all the way down. I opened the medicine cabinet quietly. Took out the aloe-scented hand sanitizer. I took a gulp, then another. Felt dizzy. You can’t do this. This shit’s pure alcohol. It’ll make you sick. Better do it again. Poured some more of it on my tongue. That’s enough. You’ll be clean after this. Just get one last swallow down. I did. Heard my gut rumbling. Stomach hurt.
“Sometimes you clear out the healthy bacteria and that’s when C. diff comes in. You gotta watch out for that. Great, you tell me to drink it, then tell me not to.”
Turtles All The Way Down left me with a different impression than a lot of other stories about mental illness. Aza never beats her OCD. She’s never overcome it, or gotten past it. At the end of the book, she’s managing it better than in the middle, but the reader is left with the sense that Aza will always be dealing with her OCD in one way or another, and that the best outcome for her will still involve occasional concerns about getting C. diff.