The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

“My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations”

Hazel Grace is a tough girl who has let the illness take over her life. Augustus Waters (Gus), is a cool, metaphor loving guy who has a prosthetic leg. Sparks fly when they both meet at an unusual setting of Cancer Support Group. Sweet and endearing the novel gives a taste of those first love meetings and the inherent shyness every new couple has but, suffering from cancer, their love is punctuated with sudden bouts of terrors of their terminal health conditions. The sword of cancer hanging over their heads makes them recklessly fun and adventurous. These endeavors make them realize just how deep their love is for each other. It is a novel about illness and sacrifice, love and eccentric authors, wishes and miracles. This is a not-so-perfect love story with charming characters and a delightful array of emotions. It gives an insight into how hard love really is especially when you have to tow an oxygen cylinder at your every date with a guy who has a prosthetic leg. It is a journey through an unusual kind of comic love which is tenebrous yet piquant with the allusion of mirth lurking in every sentence.

Hazel and Gus are starkly different if not for the terminally ill connection they share. Gus makes the reader fall in love with him with his carefree nature and casual yet poignant statements and habits like putting a cigarette between his lips and  not lighting it because, “It’s a metaphor you see you put the killing thing right between your teeth but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.” He is the kind of person who wants to leave a mark and be remembered. He wants to die a hero and not succumb to his illness. “No one’s gonna live forever Hazel Grace but my life got them a minute and that’s not nothing”. He believes in grand gestures of sacrifices and believes that that’s the only way to leave a legacy behind. Inspite of it all we are convinced of his love for her,"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into 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 been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you. "

Hazel on the other hand believes in loving slowly and deeply. She thinks of herself as a grenade because of her illness, “I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?” . She is in love with a novel An Imperial Affliction and Gus gives a beautiful surprise even on his death bed.

They both are beautifully imperfect for each other and you fall in love with them.

It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. And sometimes both at the same time. A touch of humor is never amiss even when you are on the verge of tears. The witty comebacks of Hazel and their conversations ending with ‘okay’ rather than ‘bye’ keep you smiling throughout. It is one of those dangerous novels where you have a momentary sense of security and unexpectedly you are pushed into the gloomy fate of your favorite character. It breaks your heart with the ghost of a smile still lingering on your lips.

If you are a Nicholas Sparks fan you might not find the novel that well written and feel the lack of finesse with which Sparks writes his stories. Though the story is somewhat like A Walk to Remember, you should still read it once just for the sake of the journey Hazel and Gus take you on. Seeing the world through their eyes is a fascinating and mesmerizing experience. Some of the lines are quite quotable and they will tug your heartstrings long after you have kept the book down. Even if you don’t like the novel much, believe me, the story will stay with you for a long time. It is an unforgettable sour-sweet story with ominously witty words. Every reader will relate with their pain and you heart will be in the palms of the author clenching at his will and chortling when he permits you to.  

Nevertheless, it is a short read and if you are a fast reader you might even finish it in one sitting.

“The world is not a wish-granting factory”.