The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I picked up this book because, well, everyone’s talking about it. A few people said ‘you’ll love it’. You know how it is.
It took me less than 48 hours to read this book because I couldn’t bear to put it down. I loved the voice of Hazel Grace. I loved her deeply pragmatic view of life and death. Augustus Waters is just lovely too.
The author describes cancer with romanticizing the illness or the dying. The thing about ‘cancer perks’ made me laugh (I reckon it’s okay to laugh, really. Gallows humour is the equivalent of the ‘ridikulus’ spell in Harry Potter. You can’t stop cancer, so you may as well use it for something else). Hazel views cancer as a side effect of life. It’s not evil, it’s not good. It just is.
This is a beautifully crafted book where everything ties in to the theme of the fall out caused by cancer. I it absorbing and thought-provoking. I will definitely read other books by John Green (hoping that they are as good as this one), but not yet. First I need to recover from having read this one.
Rhoda Baxter 