I have been resisting reading a John Green novel for quite some time now. Not because I think I won’t like him but because I haven’t felt ready for his genius (I really am diplomatic, aren’t I? Hee.). So when Penguin Canada sent me an unsolicited copy of The Fault In Our Stars, I was surprised. I had flirted with the idea of reading it but I gave up the idea immediately when I found out that the book deals with cancerous teenagers and, more likely than not, a lot of heartbreak. I actually have a thing against books dealing with dying people. I don’t like them. I feel they are manipulative and if my emotions are going to be played with, I want them to be played in a much subtler manner than reading about people in various stages of dying. But still, I had this pretty hardcover copy sent for review (it’s gorgeous) and I felt almost obligated to read it. So in the interests of being fair, I picked up the book and 318 pages later, I closed it. Now I probably have to hand over my first born child to Penguin for giving me the impetus I needed to read John Green. Because you guys, (and I’m sure most of you know this already) the man writes like a dream. “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasures of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout in 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 returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I’m in love with you.” Also:“Oh I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”There are many, many more instances of utter genius but these two quotes touched me the most. Now, as I said before, sad books are not my thing because honestly, life more than makes up for it in sadness quota. However, one of the biggest surprises awaiting me was that while there was plenty of sadness in the novel, it was a grounded sadness. It was a…hmm…your heart will break but you’ll live on and see the beauty of life kind of sadness. It was a realistic sadness without all the melodrama and theatric emotion that books in this particular genre are known for. Apart from the gorgeous writing, the characterizations were so exquisite. There is not a huge cast of characters, no superfluous one mention only people who wander in and out of the narrative without any particular importance. From Isaac to Patrick to the Dutch secretary, they are all humanized. Hmm. I just wrote an essay about “humanizing” fictional characters, heh. But in this instance, what the humanization does is make them relatable to the reader, easier to empathize with and feel for. Hazel’s and Augustus’s relationship is beautiful but I liked how it wasn’t trivialized by melodramatic instances. Life was the only drama their relationship needed. And I like how Hazel and Gus’s relationship is juxtaposed with Isaac and Monica’s relationship and how Hazel does not blindly hate Monica. These little details, the little instances that move the reader from beyond the fictional to that liminal space where you know that what you are reading is made up but it could so easily be real are one of the reasons the book is a success. A resounding one at that.I loved how Green allows the reader to get both perspectives: the parents are also well represented in the novel. Their fears, their grief are allowed to come out and be felt acutely. I recently read “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Dostoyevsky and “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka. Both of them deal, to some extent, with the idea of humanity, of relationships between a “sick” person and healthy people and both of them question the reader about the time limit that once passed makes it allowable for a person to see the sick person not as a person but as the sickness itself. The Fault in Our Stars reiterated this question and while it was not so bleak as the other two works I mentioned, it does raise some very important questions about humanity. Who we are, our sense of identity, our sense of purpose, our hopes and dreams – is that what makes us us? Or is it our biology? Do we only exist if we leave something of ourselves behind? Why do we need to immortalize ourselves in the relatively short lives we live? The Fault in Our Stars asks these questions. Hazel and Gus ask these questions. What if you don’t have time to become heroes? What if you don’t live any indelible mark on the world? Was your life any less meaningful than the guy who did? I don’t know but it gives me a lot of pleasure to ponder these questions.The book has a lot of heartbreak, a lot of pain and a lot anger. But at the end of it all, when all the tears have been shed and all the resolutions made and broken, the book has a lot of hope. You wouldn’t have thought it, huh? I didn’t either. Oh right. This is a review. So. I think you should read this book. Savour it slowly. In sips.
