The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

(read and written January 2012)


I just finished reading Fault of Our Stars, having sat down at midnight and reading it in one sitting. This in and of itself is not unusual; I don't sleep much, and I am an incredibly fast and prolific reader. However, this book grabbed me by the heart and didn't let go. Having not read any of Green's other books, I cannot say with accuracy if this is his best work. But I cried steadily throughout the last half of the novel, and there's really only a handful of authors who are capable of eliciting that effect on me. (Although I have to say, the more I read of the YA genre, the larger that handful becomes) I knew going into it that it was going to be a sad story. This is a book of teenagers with cancer, which shouldn't be heartwarming. Yet, in a way it was. I laughed out loud several times. I loved Augustus almost as much as Hazel, and their irreverent humor just made me fall in love with both of them more. The way in which the characters speak is not necessarily realistic, though it's actually how I speak sometimes, when I'm trying to be funny and talk over people's heads. But it was wholly them, that pattern of speech. As per usual I will not speak too much of the story, just that it was beautifully written and insanely moving. It reminded me not just of how fragile all life is, but again of the most incredible part of all our lives- that first real feeling of true and absolute love. Because no matter the circumstances, that first love is deep, immovable, and tragic in its' beauty, regardless of how well or how horribly it turns out. So that is what this book is about, to me. Not a cancer book, or a book about dying. It is simply a book about loving, and how beautifully painful it is.