I have just finished reading John Green's "The Fault In Our Stars" which arrived three days ago (much to my glee since I've waited a whole month for it and other books to arrive from Book Depository) and I've been racking my brains out, ever since, to come up with at least a reaction about what a great book it is/was. Try as I might, I can't come up with words that would level up to how awesome it truly is, a word of praise or strings of cliches would deem bottom-rung as compared to the ones done by millions of John Green aficionados out there. But first, a confession. I am guilty of being a literary snob when it comes to this genre (Young Adult just seems a bit ill-suited for someone whose age is slipping off the days of the monthly calendar). I am aware of this flaw and therefore my opinion is unsound and not worthy to be quoted. I do know of some people whose literary tastes cannot be underestimated or undermined and whose preferences are not limited to the dead fictionists from days of yore (they've goaded me in the direction of YA in ways I am unwilling to admit). I have shun the possibility of reading the Potter series and I never had the temptation to pore over Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games. It is therefore a sort of radical leap when I placed a John Green book amongst other names of authors which I chose to read in order to wile away time. On it's first few pages, I was hooked. It wasn't juvenalia. In fact it was an easier read compared to Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast", a book I've been reading before I procured JG's. And I have realized YA has gone far. Far since Francine Pascal or V.C. Andrews (See? I haven't read much).
I was aware of the tragedy that's ahead. Hazel Grace Lancaster, the voice that covers the story, is a girl that survived a stage IV cancer case and she recounts her post-cancer life amidst a cast of characters in the state of unwellness, too. The book centers on her life and her struggles for normalcy despite it's known finitude. It turns out to be a blend of heartbreaking and funny examinations of what it's like to be at the brink of womanhood and being sick with the Big C. There is a love affair going on that is worth enduring every sugar-coated and cheesy lines (well gut punching, actually). Augustus Waters, a smart-mouthed amputee (over osteosarcoma) falls in love with Hazel and goes through life's bumpy road in the state of unwellness with her. There is also a mention of Peter Van Houten, an inveterate wastrel and a reclusive author of the book An Imperial Affliction whom Hazel Grace took up the courage to meet in Amsterdam just to ask about the book's possible denoument. What took place in Amsterdam prodded me on my 4th hour of reading that I nearly gone cross eyed. This book ventures into a lot of things all at once, and life lessons are just bursting upon page after page. It just really ties up a knot right on your heart and stomach (especially if you're someone who knows someone who's actually in almost same condition as Hazel; my aunt died of breast cancer, another aunt died of critical Crohn's disease, my mom once had a cancer scare which left enough trauma in me than anything in the world could fend off) but there were the funnies that served to loosen up these knots, however, a comic view over the dark and hurting realities that took shape in the book that somehow made me realize what an awesome writer this John Green guy is since he doesn't flinch over the Big C and wrote about it in a humor that does not purport to offend or bore you.
I was aware of the tragedy that's ahead. Hazel Grace Lancaster, the voice that covers the story, is a girl that survived a stage IV cancer case and she recounts her post-cancer life amidst a cast of characters in the state of unwellness, too. The book centers on her life and her struggles for normalcy despite it's known finitude. It turns out to be a blend of heartbreaking and funny examinations of what it's like to be at the brink of womanhood and being sick with the Big C. There is a love affair going on that is worth enduring every sugar-coated and cheesy lines (well gut punching, actually). Augustus Waters, a smart-mouthed amputee (over osteosarcoma) falls in love with Hazel and goes through life's bumpy road in the state of unwellness with her. There is also a mention of Peter Van Houten, an inveterate wastrel and a reclusive author of the book An Imperial Affliction whom Hazel Grace took up the courage to meet in Amsterdam just to ask about the book's possible denoument. What took place in Amsterdam prodded me on my 4th hour of reading that I nearly gone cross eyed. This book ventures into a lot of things all at once, and life lessons are just bursting upon page after page. It just really ties up a knot right on your heart and stomach (especially if you're someone who knows someone who's actually in almost same condition as Hazel; my aunt died of breast cancer, another aunt died of critical Crohn's disease, my mom once had a cancer scare which left enough trauma in me than anything in the world could fend off) but there were the funnies that served to loosen up these knots, however, a comic view over the dark and hurting realities that took shape in the book that somehow made me realize what an awesome writer this John Green guy is since he doesn't flinch over the Big C and wrote about it in a humor that does not purport to offend or bore you.
This is what's so nice about reading (a new author, too), like eating a box of chocolate or treading on an unchartered territory, you'll never know what hits you and most of all, you'll never know just how it will change you, about your views on certain things in life. Yeah, dying sucks, the book will say repeatedly but, really, it tells you to live your best life everyday too.
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"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 a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. 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.”
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“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.”
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“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. 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.”
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. 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.”
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“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
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“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
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When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn't get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn't even speak, so I held up nine fingers.
Later, after they'd given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, "You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine."
But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.”
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When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn't get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn't even speak, so I held up nine fingers.
Later, after they'd given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my head while she took my blood pressure and said, "You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine."
But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.”
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“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
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“It seemed like forever ago, like we've had this brief but still infinite forever. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
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“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
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P.S.
Once again, I was at the leisure of having my heart broken and mended .... by a book. :-P
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