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Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

When Hazel Lancaster was thirteen she was diagnosed with stage IV thyroid cancer, but a miracle and a new drug have bought her some time. However, she still has tumors in her lungs and uses an oxygen tank to help her breath. Now sixteen, Hazel’s best friends are her parents and her greatest obsession is a book called An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. When Hazel is introduced to Augustus Waters, an amputee who has Osteosarcoma, she realizes that she has become the disease. Augustus is beautiful and interested in Hazel, and he soon comes to share her love for An Imperial Affliction. But when Hazels feels like a bomb about to go off, how can she possibly become close to another person? When Hazel and Augustus are given the chance to visit Van Houten to learn how their favourite book ended, they try and have bit of forever even if there time together might be limited.

What a book! It’s been a few days since I finished, but I’m still not sure exactly how to describe The Fault in Our Stars. I’ve loved all of John Green’s previous books, and with all the hype surrounding his latest it would make sense for it to not live up to anyone’s expectations. I went to the New York book signing and started this book while waiting in line to see John and Hank, and finished it in my hotel room. Despite my excitement, this book managed to surpass any of my expectations. Some books I’ll finish and all I want to do is talk about them. Looking for Alaska is that type of book for me. The Fault in Our Stars is a difficult book for me to actually talk about, because reading it felt like such an emotional (and therefore personal) experience. It’s not exactly like how Hazel feels about An Imperial Affliction, since I can’t relate to Hazel: I’m perfectly healthy and don’t understand what she is going through. This book focuses on the fleetingness of life and how many people want to make their lives and their deaths mean something. I love the themes and the writing, but the characters took the cake. I still can’t stop thinking about them, and I think it’s been a very long time since characters have affected me so much. This is the kind of book that actually makes me hurt, but I just loved it so much. Not only is it my favourite by far of John Green’s books, I’d say it’s tied with The Book Thief for my favourite YA book. The common criticisms of his books are that they are all very similar, but this definitely doesn’t apply for The Fault in Our Stars. The fact that Hazel is a girl is the smallest difference from the other books. You might think that a man writing from a teenage girl’s perspective wouldn’t work very well, but Hazel actually reminded me a lot of a friend in high school. Often books can portray an unrealistic male love interest, but Augustus was wonderful while still being flawed and real. While Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns all had well planned out plots, The Fault in Our Stars didn’t have such a strict plotline. It didn’t have as much humour or the epic adventures featured in the other books. While I wouldn’t describe his other books as love stories, that would be the best way to describe The Fault in Our Stars. It was certainly an emotional read, and it needs to be read when you have time to essentially read it straight through, since it was so difficult to put down. I’ve always loved the title, which was of course taken from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I liked the cover well enough from the start, but it looks so beautiful in person. After reading the book, I appreciate the cover even more. The Fault in Our Stars was certainly John Green at his best, and fans of his earlier books will fall in love with this achingly beautiful love story.

5/5

“I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

book review john green the fault in our stars john green review

7 years ago 39 notes

Book trailer for The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

books john green the fault in our stars

6 years ago 49 notes

On Wednesday night I went to the New York The Fault in Our Stars book signing. There was singing, signing, dancing, John, Hank and Maureen Johnson. And, of course, The Fault in Our Stars. Still a bit too overwhelmed to write a review, but it’s coming. It was easily the best thing about my trip to New York.

hank green john green maureen johnson the fault in our stars tour de nerdfighting taken by me

7 years ago 31 notes Source

My copy of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

john green the fault in our stars taken by me

7 years ago 85 notes Source

John Green on Augustus’ Pretentiousness

Anonymous asked: I feel like the only person in the universe that doesn’t understand the cigarette metaphor. Can you explain it? And perhaps the implications of having a character so concerned with metaphor and grand Romantic images over the reality of their lives?

Right, so there are a lot of ways to answer this question, I think.

The very straightforward way: If you think of symbols as “enchanted objects,” Augustus associates the unlit cigarette with taking control over his health, which often feels (and is!) out of his control. So he puts the killing thing in his mouth but denies it the power to kill him.

The less straightforward way: Augustus is a very performed character, right? He delivers monologues, for God’s sake. He’s one of those kids who is super self-conscious and always assumes that people are watching him and/or listening very closely to him. So this is one of the ways that we see him performing the role of Augustus Waters instead of just being authentically himself. (This changes over the course of the novel; even though he clings to the IDEA of the cigarettes to the very end, it’s worth remembering that he never actually GETS them in that scene at the Speedway.)

3. There are even less straightforward, metafictional ways to read Gus’s obsession with symbol and metaphor (like, he’s a character in a novel that’s about how fiction is important and ‘real’ even though it is made up and not real, etc.), but I find that stuff a bit much, personally.

Read here.

semperbi asked: So, do you think that Augustus the manic pixie dream character of this novel?

Not really. Augustus’s way of imagining a good and heroic life is really problematic for Hazel, and she thinks that he is completely wrong. That’s very different from the standard manic pixie dream interaction, in which a character appears whose worldview the protagonist finds wholly convincing and totally revelatory. It’s true that Gus helps bring Hazel out into the world, but she never really buys into his wanting to live a big life crap.

Also, Gus’s obsession with living a kind of performed life can be really off-putting (like when he makes everything just so at the funky bones with all the Dutch things, except the conversation is bad because he just wants to deliver his memorized lines and the food is also bad because food chosen for metaphorical resonance does not tend to taste good).

Hazel is conscious of these immaturities, but she has some immaturities of her own. Their great gift is that they’re able to put that stuff aside and care for each other while also not backing down from their convictions.

Read here.

john green tfios the fault in our stars

4 years ago 101 notes

marthahan

Augh I’m obsessing so much about this book.

So I work at a print shop at my school which means that I occasionally get to print stuff for free, within reason, and so sometimes I print my art. It’s such a bizarre feeling seeing something that only existed on my computer became an actual tangible thing.

So anyway since I’m a nerd and I’m waiting for this book to come out I formatted my original submission into a printable cover, with the dimensions based on my hardcover copy of Paper Towns (as you can see in the third picture).

I’m sure this doesn’t look nearly as good as what the actual as yet unreleased cover will be but this will placate me for the time being. I’ve actually had this printed out for a while but never got around to taking a picture. Unfortunately I have no idea where my good camera is (I think my dad took it) BUT I was impatient and ended up using my phone, so yea, not the best quality photos. It’s like past midnight right now, so I’m not gonna fuss. EDIT: replaced with better pictures (clearer, more accurate colors).

The paper itself was too short (we don’t stock longer than 11x17) so the quote on the inside got all squished.

OH before I forget, the little nerdfighter arms on the spine aren’t my design. I found it in a quick Google search. I didn’t find out whose it was until after I printed it, but I believe it was drawn by Vondell Swain, so credit goes to him for that.

the fault in our stars john green book cover nerdfighters

7 years ago 789 notes Source