The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
I’d have to say I wasn’t a big fan of cancer before I started this novel (I lost my grandfather to pancreatic cancer), and I’m even less of a fan of this debilitating disease after finishing this depressing read. But I have to give John Green his due. He could have taken the concept for THE FAULT IN OUR STARS and spun it in an entirely different direction, leaving me in a constant state of despair and depression and during which time I would have needed to be slightly medicated in order to push through the pain. Instead, though, there’s a lingering sense of sadness, but it’s coupled with a sense of hope and a slightly eccentric voice that at times might sound like it has been recycled through a respirator.
Hazel Grace Lancaster was fun and exciting and more than a bit eccentric and even now, it’s hard not to picture her wheeling around an oxygen tank. But she doesn’t want your sympathy. Instead, the tank manages to put another quirk in her step and offer up a bit of wind drag. Her idiosyncratic voice and her rather humorous take on a dire situation had me cheering for her every step of the way.
Even her best friends Augustus and Isaac offered up flashlights in the impending darkness. Despite life dealing all three of them a bum hand, and then piling on the cockroaches inside the mayonnaise sandwiches, the three handed their time-stamped lives with a wisdom and strength well beyond their years.
Relationships ended and others began, as the wheels of time continued to spin; books needed to be read and video games attracted attention; new classes were discovered; and families coped with the impending loss that might hover around the next corner, or then again, it might not. And I couldn’t help my sense of enjoyment, even as I knew it might come with an expiration date.