Green's second book, An Abundance of Katherines, is significantly lighter fare than his first. This novel tells about the adventures of recently-graduated Colin Singleton and his best friend Hassan as they take a road trip and end up in a rural town - Gutshot, Tennessee. The oft-melancholy Colin wants to get away from his hometown of Chicago after high school when he is dumped for the 19th time, by his 19th girlfriend. All 19 of said dumping-girlfriends were named Katherine.
Hassan and Colin decide to stick around for a while in Gutshot and take a job with a woman who keeps the small town in business by runing a factory that produces tampon strings. Her daughter, Lindsey Lee Wells, befriends the boys and eventually helps Colin break his Katherine-streak. But not before Colin develops a complex mathematical formula that he believes can graph the potential life of a romantic relationship between any two individuals, even predicting how long the relationship will last and which person will bring it to an end. Ultimately, the formula fails and Colin concludes that life is unpredictable - that we must each hold on to hope, and take what we can get.
Green's writing is humorous and full of trivia about everything from Archduke Ferdinand to Arabic and other foreign words to mathematical theory. Although Katherines might not work as well as LFA in the classroom, I would recommend it for self-selected personal reading for high school students.
Themes: loneliness, heartache, friendship, laughter
Concerns: language and mild sexual themes
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