I’m not entirely
sure what I have to say about The Fault
in Our Stars that hasn’t been said before. But I may as well give it a try.
The novel tells the
story of Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen year old suffering from thyroid and
lung cancer. At a support group for other young people with cancer, she meets
Augustus Water, a cancer survivor, and the novel primarily follows their
relationship.
It is both a novel
about cancer and not a novel about cancer. I think the narrator Hazel’s
description of her favourite novel, An
Imperial Affliction, is apt here:
it deals with cancer, but ‘it’s
not a cancer book’. The Fault in Our Stars is not about the
main characters being strong in the face of adversity, although of course at
times they are both. What I like about the novel is that it’s more about the
people than the illnesses they have. It is, to me, not about dying from illness
but about living with it, about what’s left in life when its longevity is
threatened.
There were a few minor points of style that bothered me. I have a slight obsession with dialogue, and a great prejudice against all authors who are afraid of the word said (ahem, Stephanie Meyer). Green does not, for the most part, fall into this category, but there are a few times when he informs us that Hazel or Augustus ‘explained’ this or that piece of dialogue, when we already know from their words that it is an explanation. But this is, I know, a personal and unusual bugbear. It also half-bewildered me that the novel’s very first sentence refers to ‘the winter of my seventeenth year’ and yet Hazel goes on to say she is sixteen. It did eventually occur to me that when you’re sixteen you are in your seventeenth year, but it is nonetheless a confusing choice of words, especially for the novel’s very first sentence. It also irritated me every time a teenager said ‘you are’ or ‘I am’ when surely most people nowadays say ‘you’re’ and ‘I’m’.
However, these
criticisms have one thing in common: they are all tiny. And ultimately none of
them really matter. This is a stylistically strong and well-written novel, but
its true force is emotional.
Of course, there
are moments of incredibly beautiful or clever writing. Most of my favourites
are a little too spoilery for a review, but here are two examples of what I
mean:
Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression
is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost
everything is, really.)
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
What I like about
Green’s narrative style is that it is poetic, yet still reads like the honest
and ordinary thoughts of a human being.
The characters are
all three-dimensional and well created, especially Hazel. I also thought her
parents were brilliant, and I like that at times the novel seems as much about
them as about Hazel and Augustus. I found one of the most emotive moments in
the book to be that when you realise Hazel primarily wants to find out what
happens to the mother of Anna, the protagonist of An Imperial Affliction, so as to try and imagine what it might be
like for her parents if she were to die. I was impressed that Green managed to
get across a sense of the parents’ characters without ever describing them
much, because of course they’re familiar to Hazel in a way that, say, Augustus
is not, and so it would be unnatural to describe them.
As for Augustus
himself, I remain unconvinced that anyone in reality would employ his cigarette
metaphor. Beyond that, I like him. He is a thoroughly enjoyable character to
read about. From what we learn about Hazel and what is related about him, we
can see how they would realistically get on. The dialogue between him and Hazel
is consistently funny.
I also think Peter
Van Houten is brilliant, and not only because I always love novels about books
or about people who write books. He is a clever character, and his character
development is skilfully and poignantly done – as, perhaps, are most things in
this novel
What most impresses
me about The Fault in Our Stars is
that it is the sort of book that makes you want to live. By that I don’t mean
that it’s the sort of book that makes you want to not die, because that is far
easier to write. I mean: it’s the sort of book that makes you want to live, to
feel, to make friends and have relationships, to speak to people, to care about
others, to witness humanity, to just live.
I love that it’s a novel that somehow manages to communicate that life is
rubbish, unfair and awful, but simultaneously get across that it really isn’t,
because it’s also brilliant. This seems paradoxical, and probably is, but
perhaps that is precisely the point. Life is a mixture. To me, the novel is an
honest account of what it must be like living daily in such circumstances,
constantly battling illness. The book is poignant, and it is sad, but it is
never depressing. The narrative is neither romanticised nor sugar-coated, but
it is also beautifully optimistic about life.
Greatest
strength: Its
emotional depth and balance between realism and optimism.
Greatest
weakness: A few
writing moments that I’m stylistically uncertain of – but as I already said,
these are hardly “weaknesses” at all,
Let’s
finish on a quote:
My thoughts are stars I
can’t fathom into constellations
Next
week: Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy
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