Read: 3 February, 2012Hazel has terminal cancer. She sits in her Cancer Kid Support Group rolling her eyes as she listens to the other children, children who will get better, who will beat their cancer, who will grow into adulthood. She's tired of being told how brave she is. She's tired of the refusal of those around her to face mortality.
Then she met Augustus Waters.
John Green doesn't believe in epiphanies. It was odd reading a book about the intersection between love and terminal illness without a tidy epiphany to pull the narrative threads together at the end. That's not to say that nothing is learned. The characters grow and change, they touch the lives around them and are touched, but there are no epiphanies.
I don't want to go into more detail out of respect for the author's wishes that no plot points be revealed. But I will say that this isn't your average tear-jerker that relies on the inherent emotionality of the set-up to play at depth. Rather, The Fault In Our Stars is legitimately clever and thought-provoking (and, of course, very sad). I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys books that stay with you and keep you thinking long after the final page has been turned.
As an aside, I've been watching John Green (and his brother Hank) on YouTube for quite a while. It changed the experience of the reading, in that I could spot some of the influences Green was drawing from in creating his fictional world (such as the goat milk soap detail), and I felt that I had some insight into his opinions and arguments that he was fictionalizing. I feel that this enriched my experience of the book, allowing me to see a broader dimension than just what found its way onto the page.
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