"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

John Green also runs a tumblr where he answers questions about this book: http://onlyifyoufinishedtfios.tumblr.com/

===============================================  

A version of this review originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of the George C. Marshall high school newspaper Rank & File.

Have you read Looking for Alaska? You really should. As soon as possible. I say that to everyone I talk to about books, regardless of the topic of the discussion. It is my way of recognizing the quality of John Green’s writing; it is worth recommendation no matter the context. Green, who specializes in teenage slice of life/romance, has a rare gift: he can accurately write teenage characters in the first person.

In The Fault in Our Stars, Green spins a tale of love, life and loss from the point of view of a hormone-riddled 17-year-old and makes it sound real. Unlike so many current teen and young adult authors, Green avoids the first-person pitfalls of the excessively angsty, characterless or just plain shallow narrator.

In general, Green’s plots can be summed up as “quirkiness with a gimmick.” An Abundance of Katherines is “quirky boy meets quirky girl with math.” Paper Towns is “normal boy meets quirky girl with a twist disappearance.” So it is with Fault, Green’s newest novel that incorporates elements of his previous unfinished work, The Sequel.

Fault begins as “normal girl with cancer meets quirky guy with cancer” and, after Green’s three previous books, that opening feels stale. The main characters are Hazel, who has a deep relationship with an obscure book, and Augustus, who acts like a clown pretending to be a poet but is in truth something of both.

It should be noted, though, that this is not a book about cancer. As Hazel herself puts it, “Cancer books suck.” This is a book about people who happen to have cancer. And fortunately, the quirkiness does not persist. These traits become part of Hazel and Augustus’ characters, rather than mere idiosyncrasies that make them interesting. That shows definite maturation in Green’s writing.

As Hazel and Augustus’ respective cancers continue to menace their lives and the relationship between them grows, the quirkiness is shooed out, replaced by the duo’s quest to find the author of Hazel’s book and have from him a “proper” ending. The book, a first-person fictional account of a girl with cancer who Hazel strongly identifies with, ends mid-sentence.

Their journey is by turns idealistic and cynical, and absolutely beautiful. While that by itself is not unique to Fault, seeing Green develop his characters on a deeper level than merely highlighting and elaborating their surface traits is new and refreshing. Green's characters have always been dynamic, but now they're round as well. Or perhaps the other way around. Regardless, some of the later scenes in the book are tearjerkers, and what they reveal about Hazel and Augustus is just as sad as the events themselves.

This is a book wherein the creeping weight of cancer has caused our heroes to mature much faster than the average 17-year-old. The power of the book lies not in the cancer, but in what Hazel and Augustus do with their maturity, fatality and “why wait” attitude.

4.5/5