My Review of "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book.

One the one hand the extreme amounts of existentialism and big (or maybe ostentatious) words drove me crazy...I mean who really talks like that? On the other, I'm glad that authors are giving readers, particularly young readers, challenging subject matters and vocabulary.

And then I decided to soften my stand even a bit more, because I remember being a teenager, trying to find my way and in the process of doing so, trying to think about mature subjects, voice my opinion, try out new vocabulary words, and in doing so, probably seemed as precocious as these two sometimes did.

The subject matter was interesting. Books about people dying and their revelations as they do so are not new. Neither are books about kids with cancer, or kids exploring their boundaries. But I did like that the author seemed to tackle it from an actual point of view of one of these patients - with some humor and some anger, as well as other emotions mixed in, rather than choosing an extreme, either a "woe is me" attitude or a reverent "life is swell & this is all part of the plan" attitude. The fear, the anger, the sadness, the longing, and even the momemnts of happiness that these characters felt were expressed realistically through dialogue and humor, and yes sometimes sadness. I appreciated that. It maintained a good balance between the extremes it could have taken.

My favorite quote from the book is regards to the view of a relationship by the survivor after the loved one has passed on. It occured to me that is how I felt after my divorce, as well: "The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before."

The love between the two main characters was beautiful, and I loved that it tied together so beautifully with just a few small words at the very end.





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