Road trips can solve anything! (An Abundance Of Katherines)

Green, J. (2006) An Abundance Of Katherines. New York, NY: Penguin Group

Spoilers Ahead!

Colin Singleton has been laying on the floor of his room in emotional anguish for most of the day. He has just been dumped by his nineteenth Katherine.  All of his girlfriends have been named Katherine, and every one of them has dumped him.  This one was the worst.  This one he really wanted to work.  He feels like there is hole in his gut, a missing piece, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it.  Which is saying something, as he a very smart individual.  Colin is a child prodigy.  A prodigy, but in his definition, not a genius.  This fact is where his other problem stems from.  Colin wants to matter. He wants to recognized as great.  This is where genius and prodigy separate.  A prodigy is amazing at learning what others have already pioneered, whereas a genius paves the way to something new.  Colin is afraid that if he can’t do something significant with his life, he’ll just be another washed up child prodigy that didn’t amount to anything

While he is wallowing in his self-pity, Colin’s best friend, Hassan shows up.  Hassan is older than him by a year, already graduated, but not in college.  This not-in-college status is something that Colin will constantly bother him about. Hassan’s biggest ambition is to stay at home and watch Judge Judy.  That aside, he is a good friend, really Colin’s only friend.  Hassan gets him up, makes a couple cracks at him and states he has the solution for Colin’s problem: A road trip!

They set off immediately that night, after getting parental permission of course, with no particular destination in mind.  The drive helped Colin get his mind off Katherine XIX just enough that it helped ease the pain in his emotional gut.  He started thinking of other people with holes in their guts and settled on Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  Eventually they stopped at a rest stop in Kentucky at 3am.  The next day as they continued driving, now going through Tennessee, he saw a sign for a “the final resting place of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.”  Intrigued, he had to turn off and investigate.  This is how they wind up in the town of Gutshot, Tennessee

They pull up to the general store/ Archduke tours and enter the building.  A girl about their age, short, with a too-long nose, named Lindsey sits at the cash register reading a Celebrity Living magazine.  In Colin’s eyes, she is not his type and no one who reads that magazine could be interesting.  She is their tour guide however, so they follow her out to the field behind the store and the hike to the grave.  Along the way, a rock on the ground catches Colin by surprise and he falls face first to the ground.  As lays there in pain bleeding, she springs into action.  She starts spouting medical possibilities of his injury, takes off her own shirt for stopping the bleeding, and runs off to get the medical kit. Apparently, she’s training to be a paramedic. Maybe she’s interesting after all.

Lindsey’s mom, Hollis, recognizes Colin from a TV game show called KranialKidz, and invites them to her house for dinner.  She then offers them a job, which pays $500 a week, and free room and board. Colin isn’t so sure, but Hassan really wants to stay, so they do.  The job is to record many of the citizens, especially those of the factory workers, on their memory of Gutshot.  Hollis wants to create an audio history.  During their stay, they become good friends with Lindsey, learn some things about country living, and Colin has an idea for something he can do that matters.  He sets to work on creating a mathematical theorem that can predict the outcome of a relationship, using his experience with the 19 Katherines to test it out.  It’s slow going, until Lindsey gives him some new ideas.  With her help he gets it almost perfect. He just can’t get it to work for Katherine III.  After a call to Katherine III, he finds out that he was the dumper, not the dumpee.  His memory is flawed!  While the relationship now works in his formula, it creates a new problem for him.  What does it mean that he didn’t remember correctly?

He continues to get closer to Lindsey, and they share a lot of thoughts and memories they wouldn’t normally.  They later find themselves out pig hunting with Lindsey’s friends.  Hassan and Colin are together, with no plans on actually killing a hog.  After getting chased by a giant pig, attacked by hornets, and lost in the wilderness, the two friends find themselves back at Franz Ferdinand’s grave.  Here they find Lindsey’s boyfriends cheating on her with another girl.  They confront him, he tells them to shut it, but Colin records him.  When they all meet up, Colin lets the tape recorder do the talking. A fight ensues, in which Colin and Hassan get the ever loving snot beat out of them. 

Soon Hassan, Lindsey, and Colin all have their own revelations.  Hassan doesn’t want to be a do-nothing any more. Lindsey doesn’t need to change herself to please others.  Colin recognizes that no one can predict the future.  What really matters is doing something that matters to him.

This book was a breath of fresh air; a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.  I’ve been reading so many serious, heavy, and depressing books lately, this one cleansed me of all of it.  Katherines is clever, funny, and uplifting.  There is certainly some drama, but most of it is resolved.  As for the main character Colin, I don’t think I would ever actually want to know him, but he is very fun to read about.  As someone who likes anagrams, random facts, and different languages, this book was right up my alley. I’ve only read one other book by John Green, but this is by far my favorite.

I read this book because I was required to read one by John Green.