The life-defying fiction novel The Fault in Our Stars by John Green became a cult classic for love hungry teenagers with hopes of emulating the sarcastic but true romance of Hazel Lancaster and Augustus Waters. I spent the last couple weeks of my life indulging in the novel to find what all the rave was about.
The novel follows Hazel Grace, a 16 year old girl growing up with a death sentence because thyroid cancer has ruled a majority of her life. She carries around an oxygen tank named Phillip and can thank her continual fresh flow of oxygen and a drug called Phalanxifor, which has kept the mets in her lungs from neither shrinking nor growing, for keeping her alive. She has quite a blasé view on life, knowing that she most certainly will die at a young age. Hazel doesn’t necessarily push herself to do anything remarkable, but has managed to earn her GED and is attending college classes (pretty phenomenal if you ask me) at a local community college in Indiana.
Her life revolves around hanging with her parents, watching "America’s Next Top Model" and being forced to attend support group meetings for cancer patients at a local Church. There she meets the infamous Augustus Waters; easy on the eyes who has had only a slight duel with cancer (osteosarcoma) before claiming his leg. Augustus is witty, sarcastic, and has a hero complex that most people would find endearing. I, in turn, find it insufferable.
From the support group meeting we are dragged through 300 plus pages of two young teenagers trying to understand the meaning of life and how to make the most of the time that they do have on Earth. Green puts together two characters who are flawed by this horrible disease, but still lack the amount of years needed to really debate the meaning of life. I understand that death is staring right back at them, but why not allow them to be teenagers. We get the feeling of youth only slightly through the ever present love for video games, poor teenage driving, and love for silly television shows. I almost feel as if Green has robbed these characters of their youth all because of a death sentence.
For a majority of the book, both refuse to acknowledge that the two are indeed in a relationship with each other for fear of hurting one another in the end. It is incredibly frustrating and completely unnecessary because the reason I am reading the book is to find how love can heal and reinvigorate the passion one has for life. Or maybe I read it just for fun. Either way, the ending came as painfully predictable and anti-climatic, which after many raved reviews, maybe I ruined it for myself. I had friends who told me they shook with tears for the last 75-100 pages. Though tears tickled the backs of my eyes, and yes, maybe a few dribbled onto the pages, I was never wrought with agony as most said I would be.
Though The Fault in Our Stars was touching, it fell short as life-defying or life-changing. I came to expect the ending. The only true hero in the book ended up being the sarcastic, douchebag Peter Van Houten who penned the tragic book An Imperial Affliction that helped blossom the young love between Hazel and Augustus. Van Houten, an angry, depressed and seemingly ignorant alcoholic, spits venom and hurtful truth towards the doomed teens in a wishful journey to Amsterdam. Not your typical hero, but his blackened hatred of life is what ultimately brings these two teens fully together. It was a nice break from the forced sarcasm and “deep” conversations often had between our two death bound lovers. I enjoyed the bitterness his character brought to the bubble gum verse between all characters in the book.
Call me a Grinch, but the novel failed to evoke the emotion I found myself longing for throughout my reading. I applaud its attempt to tackle a heavy subject with light-hearted humor and witty remarks, but in the end I was left with a handful of empty characters and a desire to run to the nearest book store.
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