Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Wow. I've seen a lot of reviews starting with that word, it's true. Except here I'm using it in a slightly different sense - Wow, I have never been so under-whelmed by a popular book. I didn't hate it exactly; it was readable enough and I managed to finish it. It's just that it seemed like any other generic child-with-cancer book, complete with fluffy romance, lack of realism and predictability.

Plot summary - Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

Looking at the reviews for The Fault in Our Stars on Amazon, I'm beginning to wonder if I read the wrong book. At the time I write this, there are 116 five star reviews and 9 four stars - the meagre six lower reviews are just complaints that a supposed signed edition arrived unsigned. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THIS.

I've noticed a lot of reviews calling it 'brutal' and 'raw,' but for me it was the exact opposite - far too twee and annoyingly fluffy. The teenagers in the book have a completely unrealistic view of their own mortality and seemingly don't mind in the slightest bit. Everything's just too shiningly perfect. Yes yes, there is vomit and blood, but come on - a brutal book, vomit does not make.

I just wanted to smack Hazel by the end, cancer or no cancer. She is the most selfish, inconsiderate whiny little brat I've ever read about. She's ungrateful for her mother's attention and refuses to believe that anybody else in the entire world can be ill but herself. Halfway through I seriously considered making a list of everything she doesn't like but then I realised it would be far quicker to just scribble down the few things she does. They go on a free holiday and she complains that her dream destination, wait for it... looks too much like her dream destination. For God's SAKE.

   I just shook my head.
   "What?" he asked.
   "Your obsession with, like, dying for something or leaving behind some great sign of your heroism or whatever. It's just weird."
   "Everyone wants to lead an extraordinary life."
   "Not everyone," I said, unable to disguise my annoyance.
   "Are you mad?"
   "It's just," I said, and then couldn't finish my sentence. "Just," I said again. Between us flickered the candle. "It's really mean of you to say that the only lives that matter are the ones that are lived for something or die for something. That's a really mean thing to say to me."
   I felt like a little kid for some reason, and I took a bite of dessert to make it appear like it was not that big of a deal to me. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just thinking about myself."
   "Yeah, you were," I said.

Just typing that quote out makes me furious. You'd be forgiven for thinking that she was lecturing some inconsiderate passer-by for a thoughtless comment about death. But no. Augustus, the other participant in the conversation, has cancer too. What right has she to demean his own views on life while insisting he respect her own!?

Augustus himself isn't so good either, although he's a lot less selfish and whiny than Hazel. I know she's supposed to be stupidly in love with him, but I don't see it. He's smarmy, amazingly pretentious and generally offensive, refusing to call her by the name she has told him she prefers (a la Christian Grey, actually). Oh oh, and the cigarette thing. Nobody does that. Nobody. It irks me.

And dear God, the ending. The fundamental point of The Fault in Our Stars is that Hazel is searching for something, a particular object that will make all her dreams come true. But then it's forgotten about. It's just not resolved in the slightest and it annoyed me how the 'grand finale' was about a completely different, irrelevant, plot point. ARGH.

Why does the dialogue occasionally morph into script form for no discernible reason? And should this really be marketed for children when it has gratuitous, thoughtless sex? I really didn't see that coming (Nor did she! *smirks*).

Despite my many many complaints, the prose itself is actually very good. It's descriptive without being overly so, and the narrative flows in a way that means you've read fifty pages before you even look up. I liked how John Green describes the smaller aspects of living with an illness that 'normal' people may not have thought of. I have never had cancer (*touches wood*) but I do have Lupus, which can be just as serious and I did nod and smile at a few points in the book.
 

   Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but A Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.

I really did like the natural, conversational tone of most of the book. It was very easy to read and sucks you in into reading pretty much the whole damn thing. John Green is clearly a very talented writer, but the terrible plot, unlikeable characters and general tweeness meant that I really couldn't get on with this book at all.

What were your experiences with The Fault in Our Stars? Were they more positive than mine?