BOOK REVIEW
Author: John Green
Title: The Fault In Our Stars
Publisher: Dutton Books
Place and Date of Publication: New York, USA (2012)
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The Fault In Our Stars tells the story of, teenager, Hazel Lancaster who suffers from clinical depression because of her battle with cancer. She meets a seventeen year old boy in remission from osteosarcoma, named Augustus Waters, in a support group for children with cancer. She introduces Augustus to her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten, which is about a girl with cancer who lives a good life until the author ended the novel mid-sentence. The end of the novel has always intrigued Hazel which is why she reads it over and over again. Augustus took interest in the novel and was able to set a meeting with Van Houten in Amsterdam to answer Hazel’s questions about the novel. He used his one “wish”, which he received because of his poor health, to take him and Hazel to Amsterdam. Here, they meet Peter Van Houten whom is the opposite of everything they though he would be. Later on that trip, Augustus reveals that his recent PET scan showed new tumors and he was yet again on the verge of death. They go back to Indianapolis to face the challenges ahead of them with both of their health deteriorating. They get to fall in love and experience an epic love story while trying to live every day to its fullest.
John Green graduated from Kenyon College in 2000 with a double major in English and Religious Studies. After college, he worked as a student chaplain in a children’s hospital and was able to work with children with life-threatening illnesses which inspired him to write The Fault In Our Stars. He has won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award and made the 2005 ALA Top 15 Best Book for Young Adults for his first novel, Looking for Alaska. His second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, won the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and became a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He collaborated with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle to write a three interconnected stories entitled Let It Snow. It reached number 10 on the New York Times bestseller list for paperback children’s books. Paper Towns was his third novel which earned him the fifth spot on the New York Times bestseller list for children’s books and was awarded the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel and the 2010 Corine Literature Prize. Green, then, collaborated with David Levithan for Will Grayson, Will Grayson. This novel received numerous awards, including a Stonewall Honor Book in Children and Young Adult Literature and an Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production Honor Book. Finally, his fifth book, The Fault in Our Stars was released in January 10, 2012 and so far, has earned the top spot at the New York Times Bestseller List for Children’s Books. His novels are mostly about the everyday dealings of a teenager, which is why his target audience are mostly children and young adults, but the morals and the relatable scenarios he places in every page captures the attention of more than his target. John Green is not big on the happy endings but rather he shows the reality of life, which is, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
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As a teenager, I found John Green’s honesty in his novel as something realistic and relatable. The scenarios that he placed in every book was either reality or not so far from it. He was able to capture the things a young adult can go through without sugar-coating it. The novel The Fault In Our Stars spoke to me the most not because I have cancer or because I am in love with a dying man but simply because it speaks about time. It awakens the reader to the reality of time. Do we really have enough time to have a forever? I might not be experiencing the same things exactly how he told it but I can sure relate with it. His stories are something we live by every day without us acknowledging it. I also appreciate the way he ends his novels. It is not ended in a way we can say, ‘and they lived happily ever after’ but in a way close to reality that sometimes it ends good or sometimes not.
My view of the world is pretty much parallel to what the novel is all about. There were a lot of similarities between my belief and what John Green’s novel wanted its readers to get.
“The world is not a wish-granting factory.” (p.214)
Not everything in this world is good and by now we should accept that reality but not be contented by it because there will always be room for improvement. There will be times where in you get what you want but most of the time you do not. We all wish for something but there are instances where in no matter what we do it’s not going to happen.
“You’ve got to pick your battles in this world, Hazel.” (p.138)
Mrs. Lancaster’s line struck me because every day I see people defying things even beyond their control. They focus on things that cannot be changed instead of those that they can. That is another life lesson that I value in this novel. We have to have better judgment in terms of what are the things we should change and the things we should accept as it is. Some people strive to be the best they can be. Some even work all their lives to find their purpose and eventually leave a mark or in Hazel and Augustus’ case, a scar in this world but we still have to be open to what’s possible and not.
“There will come a time, when all of us are dead. All of us. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught.” (p.13)
The thing about living is what we do it for. I am the type of person who believes that besides doing the right thing, I should live for myself. Do what is going to make me happy because at the end of the day I am the only one who is going to care. The characters of Hazel and Augustus portrayed that lesson. It does not matter that they are dying, what matters right now is that they are living and they are making the most of it by doing what they want.
“It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” (p.20)
Augustus liked placing a cigarette in his mouth but never did he light it. This speaks of choice. I agree with him because I see the world as world full of choices. You always have a choice. It is irrational and illogical for people to say they didn’t have a choice. We have control of our lives it’s just that sometimes we make the wrong choices but it does not mean we did not have a choice. We always do. “Life choices.”, as my cousin would like to say it.
“I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he go. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” (p.260)
Time is something we all wish we have more. More time to do the things we want, more time to be with the people we love but I realized that we always have enough time. It is just a matter of how you spend it. Hazel and Augustus may have not have a long time together but the one they had would always be remembered because they spent every day making each one count. These days, we take time for granted. We always think there is tomorrow but what if tomorrow does not come? We have to wake up and realize the value of what we have now.
“You of all people know it is possible to live with pain.” (p.300)
The death of Augustus left Hazel broken. She feels somehow, dysfunctional without him. Mrs. Lancaster made her realize though that she’s still alive and she should live her life even if it hurts. Not every day is a happy day but we should still go on because we are still alive. Nobody said it is going to be perfect, nobody said we are not going to feel the pain but we should continue to live because at least we have the chance to live.
The entire novel was interesting. Never was a point where I felt like it was becoming unreal or boring. It really captured my attention because of how honest it was. The first time I read it, I kind of disagreed on how John Green made death seem so tragic yet so beautiful at the same time. Reading it for the second time changed my perspective though. I used to see death as something morbid, something you cannot relate beauty with but the way he showed Augustus and Hazel’s love story changed my mind. I am not sure if it is the way Augustus died or the way they lived knowing they would die. Death became the finish line for forever which is not so bad if you think of it. The author was brutally honest about the cycle of life yet he made it seem so acceptable and simple to readers.
This book speaks for everyone that exists or existed. John Green wrote a novel about life and how in the end we all end up dying. It is just sometimes some goes before their time and people need to get left behind. Hazel and Augustus story is not just for teens or cancer patients, it is for everyone who ever loved. I’m not just speaking of love in a romantic way but love in general. It’s for everyone who lost someone. This novel makes us realize the value of time. Do we still really care how much we have of it? It also speaks of what we do with our time. The lead characters made me realize that dying or not, you should do what would make you happy. It is not promoting selfishness but its promoting happiness. Only a few of us can definitely define what can make us happy. So when the time comes that we find the answer to what would make us happy, we should hold on to it just like what Hazel and Augustus did.
“I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasure of existence.”(p.16)
John Green is a brilliant writer who can create a fictional novel based on such realistic scenarios. He was able to capture the reality of life without over analyzing things. It’s a simple novel which can be easily read by anyone. You don’t have to dig deep to get what it wants to tell you. You don’t need a dictionary to understand every line. You don’t need to decode metaphors to realize how genius this novel is. It conveys morals and life lessons that all of us, no matter what your age is, should be knowledgeable of. I look forward to more novels from John Green because he never fails to write a book which contains both the ugly and beautiful side of life which makes all of his readers want to live their lives to the fullest.
-Basically PauAu
