I cracked. I gave in. I am now "basic." I read John Green's bestseller, The Fault in Our Stars. It was different than I expected. It's a love story focused on two cancer ridden teenagers, but it's hardly about cancer at all. It's just about Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster and how they fell irrevocably in love with each other. It had me laughing, crying, and in great denial. Do I regret ever reading it? Perhaps. Don't get me wrong, I'm so glad I did, but I'm incredibly heartbroken. Yet, reading it also filled me with an outrageous amount of hope and love. It's quite beautiful. Page 258 had me choking back tears, and page 259 truly hit me with all this love and sadness. When I read page 261, it's like the world fell apart around me. It was an excellent read. John Green has this incredible gift that I can hardly explain ("my thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations"). He isn't a particularly young man; he has a family after all. Yet, he is able to sound 110% like a teenage girl, and he writes with the emotions I imagine a teen with cancer would possess.
Recently, I saw the most pathetic post on Tumblr and it truly made me lose all faith in humanity for a moment. This post was a comment from the trailer for The Fault in Our Stars on YouTube. It essentially read "I wish I had cancer so I could have a love like Gus and Hazel."
Really? Really? You wish you had cancer? What a wish. But the world isn't a wish granting factory, you know. What a horrible wish. It disgusted me. The story isn't all about cancer. It is about unconditional love and how it can come into life unexpectedly. I think if the cancer element in the story teaches us anything, it should be that we have no time to lose. We are only given a set amount of time to live and before we know it our time is up. It all runs out so why not just live and love with everything you've got? Life is such a freaking incredible thing. I feel so lucky to have been given a life to live. I would never wish for cancer in order to find love.
Anyways, I am glad I finally read it. I now understand what all the hype is about. It wasn't my favorite book (The Beautiful Between is still #1), but I would definitely read it again (I sort of read it twice).
The movie was a pretty good adaptation I would say. At least 4 out of 5 stars for sure. Shailene Woodley portrayed Hazel Grace Lancaster pretty well. She was weak and depressed in the beginning, but by the end she was full of so much love. I rooted for her the entire time. Of course, I rooted for Augustus Waters as well. If only he was real, because the character himself was truly something else. Ansel Elgort was perfect for the role because he is youthful and seems to always be smiling much like Augustus. Together, everything just played out wonderfully on screen.
Hazel has a passion for the book An Imperial Affliction, by Peter Van Houten. She has Augustus read it, and he too finds it enjoyable. Yet, there is something that bothers both of them. This book has no "the end." or "they all lived happily ever after." It simply ends in the middle of the sentence. But that's how life goes. You could literally or figuratively die in the middle of a sentence. It is just reality and that in itself makes me want to live each day like it's my last. When Hazel and Augustus travel to Amsterdam to meet this Peter Van Houten, he tells them nothing. But, after Augustus dies, Van Houten comes to Indianapolis for the funeral. It's bizarre, but he does it because Augustus had been writing to him before his death. Peter Van Houten tells Hazel that nothing happens to the other characters after the main character in the story dies (hence it ending in the middle of the sentence). He explains that they are not real characters. Nothing happens to them because they cease to exist. They never truly existed in the first place. They were just words on a piece of paper. The real world is so much different than that. When we die, our loved ones continue to have lives. The world continues because this world is quite real. It is an extremely interesting concept.
One final concept I want to touch on is the character of Isaac. He is best friends with Augustus and becomes a friend to Hazel throughout the story. Isaac goes blind due to his cancer. He doesn't have any eyes in his head anymore, and at the pre-funeral for Augustus, he says when the doctors of the future bring him robot eyes, he will tell them to piss off because he doesn't want to see a world without Augustus Waters in it. It's possibly one of my favorite parts in the book because it is simply about undying friendship. He cares so much for this one person that he could not possibly imagine seeing a world where he doesn't exist. Isaac loves Augustus so much. Hazel is so in love with Augustus. They are two very different concepts but they are both incredibly beautiful.
It is a special story to read because it is just very real.
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