Skip to main content

John Green's New Novel Helped Him Figure Out His Own Mental Illness

In a visit to AM to DM, Green talked about pulling from his early struggles with OCD to write the main character of Turtles All The Way Down.



In a chat on AM to DM's The Sit Down on Tuesday morning, best-selling author John Green talked about the ways in which his own experiences with OCD helped him write his new novel, Turtles All The Way Down.


The book follows 16-year-old Aza Holmes — who, like Green, has OCD and anxiety — as she tries to solve the mystery of a missing local billionaire. Green said he wanted to write a detective story in which the detective's obsessiveness is "distinctly unhelpful" in trying to solve the case.


"A lot of times, detectives are portrayed as obsessive, and that's somehow linked to their observational genius," Green said. "But that's completely opposite to my experience having OCD, which is that when I'm really sick I can't notice anything outside of the world of myself."

Green also spoke about the importance of finding ways to describe mental illness, so that those who live with it (and those close to someone who does) can better understand what they're going through. He said he wrote the book "in the wake of an extended period of unwellness" and that doing so helped him make sense of what he's been dealing with since he was a teen.


"One of the terrifying things about psychic pain is that it's so abstract," he said. "You can't talk about it the way you talk about a table. That makes it all the more isolating, for me at least, and also scary."

And yes, if you're wondering, it is a coincidence — "amazingly enough," according to Green — that this book is coming out on World Mental Health Day.





October 17, 2017




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dealing with Grief

Below are some sites that can help you cope with the grieving process. Death and Grief Teen Grief Support Help for Teens Teens and Grief Support for Grieving Teens Grief Speaks: Death of a Friend
Post a Comment
Read more

8 YA BOOK CLUB BOOKS TO READ FOR GREAT DISCUSSIONS

Alice Nuttall   Sep 5, 2023 B ook clubs aren’t just a way to enjoy reading and branch out by trying books you wouldn’t have picked for yourself — they’re also a great way to get into discussions of multiple different subjects inspired by the reading you’ve done together. While book clubs can be beneficial to people of all ages, they can be a particularly helpful place for teens to engage with new ideas, put their opinions forward, and take part in friendly discussions about everything from social issues to the writing process. I’ve been in a few book clubs over the years, and while I certainly haven’t loved everything I’ve read as part of them, it definitely led me to YA book club books I otherwise would never have tried and got me looking at a whole range of different perspectives. School is back in session for the autumn, and whether you’re an educator yourself or just want to help the teens in your life discover new books, a YA book club is a great way to get young people engage...
Post a Comment
Read more

CLASSIC YA BOOKS THAT MADE YOU FEEL SEEN

  K.W. Colyard   Jul 26, 2023 SPEAK   BY LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON I’m sure I’d heard of another book about rape before  Speak  came along. Hell, I might even have read one. But these days? This is the only book I can remember that dealt with one of the myriad possible reactions to sexual assault: silence.  Speak  and other books that deal with similar subject matter have the ability to empower victims of abuse to label what’s happened to them and seek help. ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET  BY JUDY BLUME Once a staple on banned books lists, Judy Blume’s most famous novel has been teaching preteens about puberty — including menstruation and boob exercises — since 1970.  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret  was far ahead of its time, being one of the first children’s books to show an interfaith family on the page, and — along with Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik — depicted a child allowed to make up her own m...
Post a Comment
Read more