BOOK REVIEW 17:THE FAULT IN OUR STARS: JOHN GREEN

 

GENERAL OVERVIEW:

RATINGS:4.8/5

GENRE:Poignance,Young adult fiction, romance, emotions

AUTHOR: JOHN GREEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: JOHN GREEN

John Michael Green was born August 24, 1977 at Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. He is an American author and YouTube content creator. He won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel'Looking for Alaska'and his fourth solo novel, 'The Fault in Our Stars', debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller. The fault in our stars was published on January 10, 2012.

Green graduated from Kenyon College in 2000 with a double major in English and religious studies.

After graduating from college, Green spent five months working as a student chaplain at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. His experiences of working in a hospital with children suffering from life-threatening illnesses inspired him to become an author, and later to write The Fault in Our Stars.

His other Notable works are:

Looking for Alaska

Paper Towns

Turtles All The Way Down

Vlogbrothers

Crash Course

His Notable awards are:

Michael L. Printz Award

2006 Looking for Alaska

Edgar Award

2009 Paper Towns

INTRODUCTION:

 This is a story of Hazel Grace Lancaster. She is a 16-year-old girl with thyroid cancer that has affected her lungs. This is also the story of a 17 year old boy whose osteosarcoma caused him to lose his right leg. 

They meet at a Cancer Support Group through a common friend Isaac. Isaac also suffers from eye cancer which subsequently makes him blind. 

Hazel and Augustus instantly become friends. They share a common novel and go on a trip across the whole world to meet the author. They want to know about its abrupt ending. 

Upon meeting the author, Hazel and Augustus are shocked to discover that he is a mean-spirited alcoholic. 

The next day, Augustus reveals that his cancer has returned which continues to deteriorate, resulting in him staying in the ICU for a few days. Augustus knows that he is dying and that too soon, so Augustus invites Isaac and Hazel to his pre-funeral, where they give eulogies. Augustus dies soon after, leaving Hazel heartbroken. 

ANALYSIS:

The book is amazing with its carpe diem, irreverent message. The book is so insightful that you vividly visualize how important and meaningful it is to live the present. It is a tale of doomed love between two teen lovers who are both cancer patients. They both know they will not be able to make it to the end of their lives,yet they believe it worth to live a fantastic life doing everything they have ever wished for. Both the lead characters are so opposite yet so similar the same time. Augustus believes in safekeeping his grants to use it in the right time the right way. Whereas Hazel really is into living your life in present. She is not so optimistic about her cancer future. She is so adamant that she is to believe she won't be able to live her teens. She barely gets out of her room.

 She spends her remaining days of her life reading and re- reading her favourite novel. Her favourite novel is' An Imperial Affliction' by Peter Van Houten. She truly worships the author cause the character he depicts in the novel is so very similar to Hazel. But the novel doesn't end. So by re-reading it she believes she will be able to cipher the end. However she keeps writing messages to the author which is not replied at all. Like I really don't get it why the original author needs to create a fictional author who is so reclusive and short tempered. 

In fact first half of the novel revolves around this fictional novel. It is already known in the beginning that the author leaves the readers hanging. And it is really not essential to keep reminding the readers about the novel with no ending. He keeps doing by including Augustus. And what I find unbelievable is that he becomes the one to contact the personal assistant of the author and not Hazel. Hazel is the one who introduced the novel to Augustus. I can't digest that just reading the novel once and in first try he gets to receive a message from the author. Well he has to be super lucky cause the same message which was sent by Hazel a thousand times goes unread while the message he dents is replied that too with a meeting arrangements at the authors hometown. 

However I really appreciate the boundaries he pushed through to introduce the cancer teens and their difficult times. The families, the finances, the friends, their emotions, their helplessness makes your eyes brim with tears. It is so agonizing to see their predicament which is so very enduring. You wish it would end a lot sooner when you go on reading their sufferings. 

When you believe it's Hazel who is going to die sooner between the two of them you are taken aback that Augustus whole body is infected with osteosarcoma cells. It has in fact metastasised to his whole body.

The part where Augustus invites his only two friends Hazel and Issac to his pre funeral is heart wrenching. Words get stuck in your throat and you become speechless. They are so young yet they have lived the most meaningful life with a meaningful message. He says he wants to be remembered in the future by his friends as his old confident self.  

When the readers keep assuming that it's Hazel who is gonna die earlier, Augustus has this spread of the metastatic cells that leads him to ICU. 

CRITICISM:

I am quite not satisfied with the role Hazel plays after Augustus death. She still goes on for the ending of the novel which is so unrealistic. She does this because she thinks it was what Augustus wanted after all. 

The contents of the novel is not cohesive at all. It really does not match with the title. The fault in our stars is really not quite appropriate. The author thought it so because of of the miscalculated position of the stars. And they had cancer. And they fell in love and they fell apart. And Augustus died. But all these incidents does not really coalesce. Firstly the author includes the book. Both the leads are chasing the author to know the ending and the author does this in real as well. We never get to find the ending which is so frustrating. I really wanted to keep the book shut a lot of times because the author really never discloses anything at all. 

The book would have been much better if the book was either of the two plots. 

1.If the plot was completely about the cancer stricken kid it would be more indulged in emotions and care and Poignance. 

2. If the story was completely about two lovers and their health.

And above all if there was no any mixture of the inner novel with its reclusive author it would have been fantastic. 

 When you are revolving around the same plot again and again it becomes boring. And above all the plots are random and disorganized. 

MY CONCLUSING THOUGHTS:

Above all the novel grasps the readers attention with its cancer metastastic spread. Since people are likely to get eager whether the cancer stricken lovers survive their disease or not they continue to read further. I liked the idea that the author in real too leave the readers hanging. The readers ought to make or imagine their own sort of ending. 

Please feel free to comment on the comments section below what you disliked about the novel.

Happy Reading 💗🙂

BY SANJITA NAPIT