The Fault in Our Stars

This book is so beautifully written with incredible depth of emotion. It gracefully captures the fragility of love and the complexity of being human.

The best stories are about memory.The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is quite possibly the best standalone novel I have ever read and is certainly the most phenomenal book I’ve had the privilege to experience in the year 2013. It is my third favorite story and favorite non-fantasy novel. The title comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and it sets the perfect tone for this story written in the first person by Hazel, a sixteen year old girl in the regressive stage of lung cancer who nevertheless is required to cart around an oxygen tank because (as she so perfectly puts it) her “lungs suck at being lungs.” Her mother forces her to go to a cancer patient/survivor group where she proceeds to exercise her considerable teenage snark and wit along with her friend Isaac who is suffering from a type of cancer that eventually requires the removal of an eye.One day Hazel catches the attention of a boy named Augustus and their romance is as breathtaking and expedient as it is completely genuine and uncontrived. Augustus has recovered from bone cancer that left him with a prosthetic leg, but did nothing to diminish his spirit. She can scarcely believe he’s as perfect as he projects and indeed feels as though she’s found his hamartia or fatal flaw when he puts a cigarette in his mouth. Hazel is of course livid that anyone who survived cancer would willingly place themselves into its way again, but Augustus never lights them using the act as a metaphor of having “the killing thing right between your teeth, but you not giving it the power to do its killing.”Both of them together have enough wit and snark to drown the world in metaphors and sarcasm with just the barest dash of bitterness for their plight. Hazel whom Augustus calls “Hazel Grace” for most of the novel feels incredibly guilty that she’s allowed Augustus to fall for her as she and her family expect her cancer to return full force at any moment, and yet their relationship parallels the ever moving train of her mortality. So much so that Hazel shares with him that her favorite book is a story by the reclusive author Peter Van Houten called An Imperial Affliction.“My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn’t like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising that affections feels like a betrayal.”Van Houten’s work is very meta to the larger story at hand being about a girl named Anna who suffers from cancer and her one-eyed mother who grows tulips. But Hazel makes it very clear that this is not a cancer book in the same way that The Fault in Our Stars is not a cancer book. Anna grows progressively sicker and her mother falls in love with a Dutch Tulip Man who has a great deal of money and exotic ideas about how to treat Anna’s cancer, but just when the DTM and Anna’s mom are about to possibly get married and Anna is about to start a new treatment, the book ends right in the middle of a-Exactly.This drives Hazel and eventually Augustus up the wall to not know what happened to everyone from Anna’s hamster Sisyphus to Anna herself. Hazel assumes that Anna became too sick to continue writing (the assumption being that her story was first person just as Hazel’s is), but for Van Houten to not have finished it seems like the ultimate literary betrayal.As terrified as Hazel was to share this joy with Augustus (and god knows I understand that feeling) it was the best thing she could’ve done because they now share the obsession and the insistence that the characters deserve an ending.The conversations of Hazel and Augustus are not typical teenage conversations, but they’re not typical teenagers. Mortality flavors all of their discussions and leads to elegance such as“The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself. And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us.”They speak of memory and calculate how there are fourteen dead people for everyone alive and realize that remembering fourteen people isn’t that difficult. We could all do that if we tried that way no one has to be forgotten. But will we then fight over who we are allowed to remember? Or will the fourteen just be added to those we can never forget? They read each other the poetry of T.S Eliot, the haunting lines of Prufrock,“We have lingered in the chambers of the seaBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownTil human voices wake us, and we drown.”And as Augustus reads Hazel her favorite book she“…fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”The quotes from this story are among the most poignant and beautiful I have ever seen.“Gri...

I apologize for the lengthiness of this review. There was just so much I had to say concerning this book.The one that rips your emotions apart. The Fault In Our Stars. Many of you have probably heard of this book, and are anticipating the movie. I know I am. I’ve been wanting to watch the movie because I love Shailene Woodley. But since it comes out next week, that means I had to read the book beforehand. (Yes, I’m one of those people that has to read a book before the movie comes out.) That meant embracing something I’ve been putting off for so long. So what did I put off for so long? This is a story about a girl named Hazel Grace who has terminal cancer. She attends support group for cancer, but it just makes her roll her eyes. One night at a normal meeting, she meets a beautiful boy named Augustus Waters. Afterwards, they rewrite each other’s stories.So I’m going to be brutally honest here. I was afraid to read The Fault In Our Stars. I have read so many reviews of this book, and mostly people just talk about how much they cried. And not just cried, but ugly snot dripping out of your nose mixing with your tears cried. I’m afraid of books like this. I guess I’m afraid to get emotionally involved in a book because its going to open up my own personal wounds and emotions, no matter what the subject matter is of the book. But there was another reason why I was afraid to read this book. When it comes to tough topics, like cancer for this book, I am afraid of over cheeziness. I don’t know why, but I despise books where a character goes through a tough journey and the author spits out bits of “inspirational” sentences that are created solely to make a person feel some sort of emotion. I have never found inspiration in these types of books or sentences, and this is probably the fact that I have been overexposed to these kinds of things, and i’m kinda sick of them. I’ve seen many people quote these kinds of books, thinking they are beautiful and true, but never once have I seen people follow these guidelines to life. These are sentences like “He found that he was struggling on his journey but he knew that love would take him where he needs to go, free his soul, if only he could just allow himself…blah blah blah” I’m not trying to take anyones thunder away. If you find solace in these kinds of passages, then by all means, please ignore me. My discrimination against these types of passages is a personal one.But what I loved about this book was that it stripped a lot of these passages apart. Don’t get me wrong, there were some beautiful passages in this book, but it wasn’t the same old inspirational passages that are sometimes found in books about tough topics. What I always found difficult in books about tough topics, was that their struggle became who they were. I always questioned what happened after these characters overcame their obstacles, and I always imagined that they fell apart because their journey was so ingrained in who they were, that there was nothing left after it was over. But thats not what happens in this book. These characters aren’t their sicknesses. I felt endless possibilities for these characters after the book was over, and I was okay with that.I believe that this is a book that you will either love or you will be bored with it and hate it. I’ve heard both sides of the argument. And thats perfectly understandable. Some people aren’t moved by this type of story. I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I would be. There were a few times that I thought I would cry (and believe me, it takes A LOT for me to cry because of a book. And so the fact that it even got me a little close to crying is a very special feat, in my opinion) I know there were people that were balling their eyes out over this. I never felt like this was a book that was written just to make me cry. I believe thats left to the books that become overly cheesy, as was discussed earlier. I just think that there were topics that were inevitable in this book, I mean the topic of the book is cancer and love. Some would argue that those two ingredients are a recipe for disaster. And because I knew that these topics were a part of the book, I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I would be. Now, thats not to say that I didn’t think the book did its job. I think my emotions were completely normal.I really don’t want to discuss the plot line here, because I don’t want to reveal anything. I had my assumptions about what would happen in this book, but I was wrong. I don’t think it was a plot twist or anything, but rather I was just wrong to assume. If you are going to read this book, which I believe many of you are, then I want you to take in what happens to the plot as you read it, and not from some assumptive view from someone whose already read it. I want you to enjoy it as I did.As for the characters. These characters aren’t extraordinary except for the fact that they have/had cancer. And I think thats fantastic. I didn...

Why do any of us ever stop reading Young Adult (YA) novels? When my 13-year old daughter made me promise to read The Fault in Our Stars, I shrugged, agreed, and threw it on the pile with all the other books I have promised to read, knowing it would be a while given that my have to list numbers in the double dozens. She kept after me though, and her relentlessness paid off. The Fault in our Stars by John Green, a lovely piece of literature, posing as a YA novel and named Time’s Best Fiction book of 2012 (where’ve I been?), is loaded with rich and fertile subject matter akin to great literary works. Yet while epic life and death themes wax and wane throughout, TFioS retains all those things sacred to teens like swaggy dialogue and biting wit along with the occasional teen tantrum. Result? Texture and comedic relief temper the grand emotions sweeping through this book like so many divergent currents. Hazel Grace Lancaster is dying. She’s been the cancer kid for a few years now, always on the verge of checking out since her lungs seem uninterested in doing the single job to which they have been assigned: providing air to the rest of her body. In Hazel’s world, everyone she meets suffers from some Herculean illness so her life seems not so bad, considering. At a Support Group meeting in the Literal Heart of Jesus (you’ll see), she meets hunky Augustus Waters and his friend Isaac. Augustus has a touch of cancer himself, but is currently NEC (no evidence of cancer). One thing leads to another and then, badda-bing, badda-bang, Hazel and Augustus are hanging out. I can’t say dating because Hazel holds back, knowing she’s going to die soon, and not wanting to bring anyone else down with her; she’s already suffering tremendously over the fact that her pit crew -- mom and dad -- will be out of a parenting job once Hazel’s checked out. Augustus, clever, hot Augustus doesn’t take no for an answer and wins Hazel over with a variety of his many charms and abilities, the most important being making contact with Hazel’s favorite author, Peter Van Houten, who wrote her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction. Hazel’s own life seems inextricably interwoven with AIA and she is determined to find out the fate of the characters after the heroine dies, leaving the book in mid-sentence, and the rest of the characters to an unwritten fate. Hazel has written to Van Houten repeatedly, practically begging for answers. Knowing may help disentangle some of her tightly strung parts, or maybe she just wants to know for the sake of knowing. But Van Houten’s not talking until Augustus emails Van Houten’s assistant and receives a response. Perhaps because of his touch of cancer, Augustus is one of those rare teens who asks the hard questions such as what does oblivion feel like and how can I avoid it? He realizes what so many of us go to great lengths to avoid -- the knowledge that all life is loss, since even the most fabulous ones end in death and oblivion, so get used to it. The pair travel to Amsterdam using Augustus’s long-unused “wish” (despite his view that “life is not a wish-granting factory”) to meet Van Houten who turns out to be a prick of the highest caliber. It all works out in the end if you consider death a method of working it out. The book is sad, but never mopey and triumphant in a, “yes, oblivion is still waiting around the corner, but deal with it,” kind of way, which is okay, because what I hear Green saying is that even in death there are tremendous amounts of life at stake. Books like TFioS hold the key to the silly, unnerving, unrelenting and magnificent universe without even knowing it, reminding me how I felt as a kid: idealistic and invincible with all the answers. Reading it will bring back all those important, self-aware notions you thought you’d left behind years ago, and give you a fresh clear lens with which to look at them. Oh, and it will help you not forget to be awesome.

I loved this book more than not. I am planning for a career in Pediatric Oncology as a Research Nurse and this book was a fabulous insight into the children who face this horrible disease.This is my honest review.This book is depressing, but in an optimistic light. Optimistic because larger than life concepts are discussed here; this is not a teenager worried over being "cool". This is a teenager who is facing life with a disease numbering her days. She has grasped what she has in this lifetime. Her perspectives are blunt, philosophical, and sadly relevant.Her vocabulary is huge. This is where I was not so excited- I enjoy learning new words reading. When a sentence is FULL of huge, not commonly used words though, it's a bit overwhelming to understand what's going on. I'm thankful for instantly being able to look up words on Kindle. I usually gather from context and root words what a word means, but when the whole sentence is full of new ones, gathering from context isn't so easy.One would suppose perhaps that most teens do not speak on these levels of intellect and vocab, but I can recall quite a few conversations from my junior high and high school years (over 10 years ago) in these same circle of words and thoughts. One must also consider that these teens would gravitate toward those places due to their being terminal as well.The one thing I really did not like more than the vocab, was the incessant run-on thoughts and sentences. While it did bring personality to the characters and sometimes even my own thought processes, writing endlessly like it drove me crazy. It's only difficult because it isn't what we are used to reading. It was a unique perspective though.The plot is beautiful. It truly is. Amidst the inevitable deaths coming, these teens face their lives and juice every drop they're able to. They made me reflect on my own; am I really taking for granted my health? I have known children personally who have lost their fights to Cancer. This book is extremely personal to me.I also can relate in one more aspect: the not being able to breathe one. I am an otherwise healthy individual, but rely heavily on my daily inhaler for Asthma. If I do not take it, I certainly feel it. At the beginning diagnosis, I was tested for allergies but had none. I was getting Bronchitis more than 3 times a year which is a hallmark sign of conditions like COPD and a terminal one called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency. Every time I watched someone light up a cigarette, I wanted to punch them. Here I am, longing to run without having an asthma attack every time... wanting to walk up stairs without pain and passing out... I hated my lungs. I still do. No matter how strong I try to make them, they refuse to function without a faithful 440mg of meds per day. The ending diagnosis was not a chemical fallout at all, but more so an anatomical imperfection.The ostea in my nose are too small so when the barometric pressure in the air shifts, this creates even more pressure in everyone's sinuses. Since mine cannot properly drain, I get a lot of backup or it's a residual, slow dripping that I don't know is happening. I never get a runny nose. I carry a constant cough and rattle in my lungs, but without the inhaler, the cough grows drastically and almost immediately I am at my body's mercy.Before ruling out the above two diseases, I was terrified. I was 24 years old- I still had life to live... I WANTED to live and put everything I had into every day I had. I had a new relationship that I was pretty confident in (and that 2 and a half years I married). I had to prepare myself for potentially "terminal" news. Alpha-1 is generally a 5-10 year life span after diagnosis, COPD being a variance. Mind you, I am not a smoker nor have I ever been. I've always been athletic and food-conscious. I was looking at my life differently. If I had Alpha-1, it meant a slow digression of my lungs and injections to suffice my body. I would deteriorate beneath myself and be dead within 10 years most likely. Endless treatments... loosing my life... I began looking at the bigger picture. Why am I here? Is what I'm already aiming to reach, what I'm supposed to be aiming for? What legacy would I leave? Would I ever be a Mama? A wife?I could not imagine facing death at any younger of an age, let alone like these characters do. I truly believe this book is not for the faint of heart, but for those who are open-minded and easy to relate to.