An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green is about a boy named Collin Singleton, a child prodigy, whom just after graduating high school his girlfriend, Katherine, breaks up with him. That's not the first time he had been dumped though, Collin had been dumped 19 times, every time the girl's name was Katherine. "Everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines." (page 15). Collin and his Judge Judy obsessed friend, Hassan go on a road trip to no given place in order to over come his Katherine obsession. During this journey Collin and Hassan find themselves in a small town and meet new people like Lindsey. Throughout the story Collin uses what he knows about math and relationships to try and find a theorem to explain relationships. 

John Green builds suspense in An Abundance of Katherines by using setting. Collin and Hassan start out on there journey to nowhere when they stubble upon a small town in Tennessee called Gutshot. "And so it was not fate, but Colin Singleton's character and passions, his mistakes and weakness, that finally brought him to Gutshot, Tennessee-Population 864, as the roadside sign read." (page 29). Setting makes the reader wondering what will become of the small little town of Gutshot. When they first get there they are intrigued to see the grave of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. They end up getting offered a job from Hollis, Lindsey's mom, interviewing people. They soon learn that something is going on with Hollis and with the help of Lindsey they try to get to the bottom of it. I don't want to give too much away but there is a problem with the factory 

John Green builds suspense in An Abundance of Katherines by using flashbacks and graphs. Throughout the story Collin has flashbacks about all his ex-girlfriends named Katherine. These experiences help Collin build graphs to try to solve the explanation of relationships. He finally finds a formula from all his plotting and graphing but it doesn't work because he made it using all his past relationship thoughts and it is a fiction book. For example in the book everyone named Katherine is a dumper and everyone named Collin is a dumpee. "Collin saw the Dumper/Dumpee dichotomy on a bell curve. The majority of people are lumped somewhere in the middle, i.e., they're either slight Dumpees or slight Dumpers. But then you have your Katherines and your Collins." (page 16). Using flashbacks and graphs builds suspense by making the reader interested and understanding of the protagonists backround. Since the protagonist is kind of a nerd he uses math to try to find a solution to his problems.