The Fault In Our Stars has recently been brandished as "sick lit" - aka, writing which "glorifies" and exploits illnesses like cancer for entertainment and a juicy story. I find this outrageous; fiction deals with all aspects of life, be it the happy moments or the sad and John Green has certainly done that.
His previous books have had different tones, different themes. With The Fault In Our Stars, he has tackled the tricky topic of teenage cancer and rightly so. Why shouldn't he? Is cancer such a taboo topic that it can't feature in fiction? Are teenagers not supposed to be able to deal with cancer? Because I tell you: most teenagers, if not all know someone who has or has had cancer, maybe they have it themselves. And John Green deals with it brilliantly.
It is real. It is hard. But it is life.
I adored Green's latest book, devouring it as I did with everything else he has written - his style is clear and precise, always refreshing to read like the sun after a storm. I won't lie, it's does deal with touchy subjects: Hazel has Stage 4 thyroid cancer and spends her life in hospitals and hooked up to machines. She meets Augustus, an amputee and ex-basketball player, at a cancer support group and they immediately hit it off.
Behind the cancer mask, this is a love story between two young people who are touching death.
It is essential that hard topics are written about for teens and young adults because otherwise we are avoiding them, pretending that cancer and depression and illnesses are not real when they so painfully are. All love stories have hardships, be it family struggles or moving away or friends; it just so happens that for Hazel and Augustus, their hardship is a terminal illness. I won't tell you any more because I don't want to ruin it. You should go out and buy it, read it, absorb it.
I urge you to read The Fault In Our Stars. It is a beautiful book, typical of Green. It is sad and you will cry but that doesn't mean it is a bad book, it means that Green can write incredibly convincingly.
The book is about the journey it takes you on and the journeys that the characters take. Hazel sees herself as a grenade, ready to explode at any moment and destroy the people she leaves behind; so she must live and love in the moment.
If you live on the first page, or the last, you are not getting anywhere. It's what is in the middle that counts, the beating heart of the story and the beating hearts of Hazel and Augustus.
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