The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Book Review by Bob Racine)

Yes, the movie is out.  No, I have not seen it. Yes, I plan to see it as soon as its turn comes up on my Netflix queue.  Will I review it separately?  You can count on that, but I feel some trepidation over whether or not it will do full justice to what is a supremely penetrating and powerful novel and maybe the last word on courage and intelligence in the face of terminal illness.  It is also a writing that invents new language to explore the confounding riddle of human existence, reflected in the experience of two teenage victims of cancer who await their impending fate. 

No words of mine could ever do justice to the richness of Green’s prose and the corresponding depth of his insight, bearing in mind that the two qualities do not always go together in the annals of fiction.  Great prose has many times been wasted on paper thin narratives, and great plots on profound subject matter have often been deprived of the acute facility of verbal expression and insight for which they cry.  But “The Fault in Our Stars” excels both ways, I am happy to say. 

This is most definitely a love story, but one unlike any you are ever likely to read again.  Hazel, a sixteen-year-old, cancer stricken American girl who has never breathed normally, carrying a tank of air around with her on a little cart and even sleeping with tubes in her nose, is the first person narrating voice.  From her rather sophisticated (for her age) perspective (she has already gotten a GED and is taking college courses) we experience her strange but humane love affair with Gus, a seventeen-year-old boy whose osteosarcomatic condition has already claimed one of his legs but from all appearances is in a state of remission.  She is accustomed to being a quiet participant in a cancer kid support group, resigned to the short life her physicians have already prognosticated.  A near death experience a few years before left her quite depressed, until her parents intervened and got her into the group on her analyst’s advice.  There she meets Gus, who changes her life in many fundamental ways.  Their short time together carries them deep into each other’s hearts and imaginations and farther across the earth than anyone could ever have expected.  

Their shared love of a pulp novel written by an expatriate American living in Amsterdam stirs their curiosity to a point that they take a trip, along with Hazel’s mother, to visit him, their journey financed by the man himself, who has allegedly invited them over.  Their encounter with the author turns out to be something quite unpleasant but at the same time instructive, and it serves as an introduction and an incentive for their visit to the Anne Frank House, in my opinion the most poignant moment in the narrative. 

Wise beyond their years, Hazel and Gus spout sayings, either verbally or, on Hazel’s part, in private reflection that come out as narration.  Try on some of these:

Love between two people is “keeping a promise anyway.” 

 “Pain demands to be felt.”

“The world is not a wish granting factory.”

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

Hazel tells us that “the worst part of having cancer, sometimes. . .[is that] the physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.”  She notes this when she and Gus have to board a plane, where their handicaps seem to define them in the eyes of the passengers and crew. 

Hazel challenges the classic Shakespearian line about the fault being in us, not in our stars.  “Easy enough to say when you’re a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars.”   Hence the book’s title!  Says Gus in reference to cancer kids, “We’re all just side effects, right?”   Hazel echoes back, “Side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. . . Barnacles on the container ship of consciousness.”  Both of them are quoting their favorite author, whose words they have internalized.   

But let no one reading this review get the idea that these kids are morbid.  They are anything but that.  They have a pervasive sense of humor and an air of sophistication that is never insulting or high-handed.  They do something for each other that prophets and collegiate minds could never hope to replicate.  And there is no lack of compassion in their hearts, as evidenced by their attendance upon the suffering of a teen friend named Isaac, who loses his eyesight from the deadly disease. 

At one point Gus says something to Hazel that should be appropriated by anyone who seeks to love another individual – wife, husband, child, sibling, parent, or friend.  It makes music that binds one life to another, one soul or spirit to another.   “You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”  That could describe almost any of us as we do battle with self-doubt, frustrated ambition or even depression.  Is the tale a sad one?  From one standpoint!  Is it inspiring?  Is it purifying to the soul?  Is it enriching?  Yes and yes and yes!  Is it funny?  And how!  Is it enchanting?  More than I had ever expected it could be!  No tearjerker this!

I am pleased that the parents of Hazel and Gus are empathetic and supportive of their offspring.  They are never obstacles in their children’s paths.  Green has spared us the added stress of a so-called generation gap, with granite barriers standing between age and youth.  Before she meets Gus, Hazel declares her mother and father to be her best friends – in fact, her only friends.  Of course Gus comes along as not only a love object but also as a boisterous breath of air opening up the world for her.

At one point Hazel reflects to herself: “the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.”  But this is not always born out by facts.  It is inconceivable to me that this book could have been written any differently or that it could be any better, and it certainly needs no rewriting.  I feel as if I have been led through a series of interlocking episodes of discovery, one emerging almost effortlessly out of another.  There is a rightness in every sequence, every chapter, every twist and turn.   I guess that is why I somewhat fear seeing the film.  Some of that rightness might be spoiled by a screenwriter’s heavy hand.  Please!  Let it not be so!

I urge everyone from thirteen to one hundred and twenty years of age to disregard any publicity you may have come across that holds this book to be essentially a young adult market item.  It should speak to everyone.  The form may be simple but the content is such that one reading might not be enough.  I know it is not enough for me.  I am sure I will be pouring over it again and again, before my own final curtain falls.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.