Book of the Week #4: The Fault in our Stars

Last night, I stayed up to an ungodly hour to finish The Fault in our Stars, a novel by John Green, who also wrote Looking for Alaska that I read earlier this month. The Fault in our Stars takes it’s title from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, when Cassius remarks to Brutus: “The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” The novel follows 16 year old Hazel, a perpetually terminal thyroid cancer patient whose cancer has neither worsened nor improved in the past year.She doesn’t go to school as a result of her illness, and is tethered to an oxygen tank at all times. She meets the attractive, seventeen year old amputee Augustus at a support group meeting for kids with cancer, and they hit it off pretty much instantly. The novel chronicles their love affair, and you can guess, when two lives, fought with illness, come together, the story isn’t necessarily a happy one.

The book examines a lot of themes that I really enjoyed. It examines grieving and loss, but in a very different manner than Looking for Alaska did. It also gives some major insight into what it’s like to live every day, knowing that you’re dying, and how you don’t really know when your “last good day” is until you’ve died. It reminds me of the famous quote where the reporter who delicately asks a terminally ill woman what it feels like to wake up each day and know that she’s dying, and she replies “how does it feel to wake up each day and pretend that you are not?” It’s tragic, and bittersweet, and beautiful. Also, without giving anything away, it talks a great deal about how after a story ends, it’s over. You don’t know what happens to the characters after. You can’t ever really know.

I’ve mentioned before that I like Green’s books. The voices he gives his characters are brilliant, to the point that I feel  genuine sympathy and love for them as the book progresses. However, I will be the first to admit that although I love his books, I love this one above all the others. I laughed, I cried, I wished it would never end.  I wish I could go into more depth about it, but I really don’t want to spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it. This book is a certain 9/10, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.