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The Fault in Our Stars Paperback – April 8, 2014
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“John Green is one of the best writers alive.” –E. Lockhart, #1 bestselling author of We Were Liars
“The greatest romance story of this decade.″ –Entertainment Weekly
#1 New York Times Bestseller • #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller • #1 USA Today Bestseller • #1 International Bestseller
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.
From John Green, #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and Turtles All the Way Down, The Fault in Our Stars is insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw. It brilliantly explores the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateApril 8, 2014
- Grade level9 - 12
- Reading age14 - 17 years
- Dimensions1.1 x 5.4 x 8.2 inches
- ISBN-10014242417X
- ISBN-13978-0142424179
- Lexile measure850L
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You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.Highlighted by 67,437 Kindle readers
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“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”Highlighted by 37,505 Kindle readers
You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.Highlighted by 34,568 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
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| Customer Reviews |
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| Price | $12.32$12.32 | $9.00$9.00 | $7.82$7.82 | $7.59$7.59 | $27.25$27.25 |
| John Green’s nonfiction debut is a masterful and deeply moving collection of personal essays about falling in love with the world. “The perfect book for right now.” | Aza is living within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. Told with shattering, unflinching clarity, this is a brilliant exploration of love, resilience, and the power of lifelong friendship. | “The greatest romance story of this decade.” Hazel and Augustus meet at support group for teens with cancer. | Last words and first loves at boarding school. John Green’s award-winning, genre-defining debut. | The deluxe 5-book set is the definitive collection of John Green’s critically acclaimed fiction. |
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Damn near genius . . . The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine
“This is a book that breaks your heart—not by wearing it down, but by making it bigger until it bursts.”
—The Atlantic
“A story about two incandescent kids who will live a long time in the minds of the readers who come to know them.”
—People
“Remarkable . . . A pitch-perfect, elegiac comedy.”
—USA Today
“A smarter, edgier Love Story for the Net Generation.”
—Family Circle
“Because we all need to feel first love again. . . . Sixteen-year-old Hazel faces terminal cancer with humor and pluck. But it isn’t until she meets Augustus in a support group that she understands how to love or live fully.”
—Oprah.com, a Best Book selection and one of “5 Books Every Woman Needs to Read Before Her Next Birthday”
“[Green’s] voice is so compulsively readable that it defies categorization. You will be thankful for the little infinity you spend inside this book.”
—NPR.org
“Hilarious and heartbreaking . . . reminds you that sometimes when life feels like it’s ending, it’s actually just beginning.”
—Parenting magazine
“John Green deftly mixes the profound and the quotidian in this tough, touching valentine to the human spirit.”
—The Washington Post
“[Green] shows us true love—two teenagers helping and accepting each other through the most humiliating physical and emotional ordeals—and it is far more romantic than any sunset on the beach.”
—New York Times Book Review
“In its every aspect, this novel is a triumph.”
—Booklist, starred review
“You know, even as you begin the tale of their young romance, that the end will be 100 kinds of awful, not so much a vale as a brutal canyon of tears. . . . Green’s story of lovers who aren’t so much star-crossed as star-cursed leans on literature’s most durable assets: finely wrought language, beautifully drawn characters and a distinctive voice.”
—Frank Bruni, The New York Times
“A novel of life and death and the people caught in between, The Fault in Our Stars is John Green at his best. You laugh, you cry, and then you come back for more.”
—Markus Zusak, bestselling and Printz Honor–winning author of The Book Thief
“The Fault in Our Stars takes a spin on universal themes—Will I be loved? Will I be remembered? Will I leave a mark on this world?—by dramatically raising the stakes for the characters who are asking.”
—Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of My Sister’s Keeper and Sing You Home
“John Green is one of the best writers alive.”
—E. Lockhart, National Book Award Finalist and Printz Honor–winning author of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and We Were Liars
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.
Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that I was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore my meds should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Support Group.
This Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.
The Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a cross. We all sat in a circle right in the middle of the cross, where the two boards would have met, where the heart of Jesus would have been.
I noticed this because Patrick, the Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen in the room, talked about the heart of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young cancer survivors, were sitting right in Christ’s very sacred heart and whatever.
So here’s how it went in God’s heart: The six or seven or ten of us walked/wheeled in, grazed at a decrepit selection of cookies and lemonade, sat down in the Circle of Trust, and listened to Patrick recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he had cancer in his balls and they thought he was going to die but he didn’t die and now here he is, a full-grown adult in a church basement in the 137th nicest city in America, divorced, addicted to video games, mostly friendless, eking out a meager living by exploiting his cancertastic past, slowly working his way toward a master’s degree that will not improve his career prospects, waiting, as we all do, for the sword of Damocles to give him the relief that he escaped lo those many years ago when cancer took both of his nuts but spared what only the most generous soul would call his life.
AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO LUCKY!
Then we introduced ourselves: Name. Age. Diagnosis. And how we’re doing today. I’m Hazel, I’d say when they’d get to me. Sixteen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I’m doing okay.
Once we got around the circle, Patrick always asked if anyone wanted to share. And then began the circle jerk of support: everyone talking about fighting and battling and winning and shrinking and scanning. To be fair to Patrick, he let us talk about dying, too. But most of them weren’t dying. Most would live into adulthood, as Patrick had.
(Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five…so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)
The only redeeming facet of Support Group was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hair swept over one eye.
And his eyes were the problem. He had some fantastically improbable eye cancer. One eye had been cut out when he was a kid, and now he wore the kind of thick glasses that made his eyes (both the real one and the glass one) preternaturally huge, like his whole head was basically just this fake eye and this real eye staring at you. From what I could gather on the rare occasions when Isaac shared with the group, a recurrence had placed his remaining eye in mortal peril.
Isaac and I communicated almost exclusively through sighs. Each time someone discussed anticancer diets or snorting ground-up shark fin or whatever, he’d glance over at me and sigh ever so slightly. I’d shake my head microscopically and exhale in response.
•••
So Support Group blew, and after a few weeks, I grew to be rather kicking-and-screaming about the whole affair. In fact, on the Wednesday I made the acquaintance of Augustus Waters, I tried my level best to get out of Support Group while sitting on the couch with my mom in the third leg of a twelve-hour marathon of the previous season’s America’s Next Top Model, which admittedly I had already seen, but still.
Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”
Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”
Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”
Mom: “Television is a passivity.”
Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”
Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”
Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”
Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”
Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”
Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”
Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”
Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.”
That shut me up, although I failed to see how attendance at Support Group met the definition of life. Still, I agreed to go—after negotiating the right to record the 1.5 episodes of ANTM I’d be missing.
I went to Support Group for the same reason that I’d once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison me with exotically named chemicals: I wanted to make my parents happy. There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer.
•••
Mom pulled into the circular driveway behind the church at 4:56. I pretended to fiddle with my oxygen tank for a second just to kill time.
“Do you want me to carry it in for you?”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. The cylindrical green tank only weighed a few pounds, and I had this little steel cart to wheel it around behind me. It delivered two liters of oxygen to me each minute through a cannula, a transparent tube that split just beneath my neck, wrapped behind my ears, and then reunited in my nostrils. The contraption was necessary because my lungs sucked at being lungs.
“I love you,” she said as I got out.
“You too, Mom. See you at six.”
“Make friends!” she said through the rolled-down window as I walked away.
I didn’t want to take the elevator because taking the elevator is a Last Days kind of activity at Support Group, so I took the stairs. I grabbed a cookie and poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup and then turned around.
A boy was staring at me.
I was quite sure I’d never seen him before. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor, one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.
I looked away, suddenly conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirt advertising a band I didn’t even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn’t even bothered to, like, brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like a normally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the cankle situation. And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.
It occurred to me why they call it eye contact.
I walked into the circle and sat down next to Isaac, two seats away from the boy. I glanced again. He was still watching me.
Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward and, at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy…well.
I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:59. The circle filled in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Patrick started us out with the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The guy was still staring at me. I felt rather blushy.
Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business, after all. So I looked him over as Patrick acknowledged for the thousandth time his ball-lessness etc., and soon it was a staring contest. After a while the boy smiled, and then finally his blue eyes glanced away. When he looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, I win.
He shrugged. Patrick continued and then finally it was time for the introductions. “Isaac, perhaps you’d like to go first today. I know you’re facing a challenging time.”
“Yeah,” Isaac said. “I’m Isaac. I’m seventeen. And it’s looking like I have to get surgery in a couple weeks, after which I’ll be blind. Not to complain or anything because I know a lot of us have it worse, but yeah, I mean, being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though. And friends like Augustus.” He nodded toward the boy, who now had a name. “So, yeah,” Isaac continued. He was looking at his hands, which he’d folded into each other like the top of a tepee. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“We’re here for you, Isaac,” Patrick said. “Let Isaac hear it, guys.” And then we all, in a monotone, said, “We’re here for you, Isaac.”
Michael was next. He was twelve. He had leukemia. He’d always had leukemia. He was okay. (Or so he said. He’d taken the elevator.)
Lida was sixteen, and pretty enough to be the object of the hot boy’s eye. She was a regular—in a long remission from appendiceal cancer, which I had not previously known existed. She said—as she had every other time I’d attended Support Group—that she felt strong, which felt like bragging to me as the oxygen-drizzling nubs tickled my nostrils.
There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. “My name is Augustus Waters,” he said. “I’m seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I’m just here today at Isaac’s request.”
“And how are you feeling?” asked Patrick.
“Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.”
When it was my turn, I said, “My name is Hazel. I’m sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. I’m okay.”
The hour proceeded apace: Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn’t get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered. Neither Augustus Waters nor I spoke again until Patrick said, “Augustus, perhaps you’d like to share your fears with the group.”
“My fears?”
“Yes.”
“I fear oblivion,” he said without a moment’s pause. “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.”
“Too soon,” Isaac said, cracking a smile.
“Was that insensitive?” Augustus asked. “I can be pretty blind to other people’s feelings.”
Isaac was laughing, but Patrick raised a chastening finger and said, “Augustus, please. Let’s return to you andyour struggles. You said you fear oblivion?”
“I did,” Augustus answered.
Patrick seemed lost. “Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?”
I hadn’t been in proper school in three years. My parents were my two best friends. My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed. I was a fairly shy person—not the hand-raising type.
And yet, just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Patrick, his delight evident, immediately said, “Hazel!” I was, I’m sure he assumed, opening up. Becoming Part Of The Group.
I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. “There will come a time,” I said, “when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
I’d learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible. Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.
After I finished, there was quite a long period of silence as I watched a smile spread all the way across Augustus’s face—not the little crooked smile of the boy trying to be sexy while he stared at me, but his real smile, too big for his face. “Goddamn,” Augustus said quietly. “Aren’t you something else.”
Neither of us said anything for the rest of Support Group. At the end, we all had to hold hands, and Patrick led us in a prayer. “Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here in Your heart, literally in Your heart, as cancer survivors. You and You alone know us as we know ourselves. Guide us to life and the Light through our times of trial. We pray for Isaac’s eyes, for Michael’s and Jamie’s blood, for Augustus’s bones, for Hazel’s lungs, for James’s throat. We pray that You might heal us and that we might feel Your love, and Your peace, which passes all understanding. And we remember in our hearts those whom we knew and loved who have gone home to you: Maria and Kade and Joseph and Haley and Abigail and Angelina and Taylor and Gabriel and…”
It was a long list. The world contains a lot of dead people. And while Patrick droned on, reading the list from a sheet of paper because it was too long to memorize, I kept my eyes closed, trying to think prayerfully but mostly imagining the day when my name would find its way onto that list, all the way at the end when everyone had stopped listening.
When Patrick was finished, we said this stupid mantra together—LIVING OUR BEST LIFE TODAY—and it was over. Augustus Waters pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to me. His gait was crooked like his smile. He towered over me, but he kept his distance so I wouldn’t have to crane my neck to look him in the eye. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Hazel.”
“No, your full name.”
“Um, Hazel Grace Lancaster.” He was just about to say something else when Isaac walked up. “Hold on,” Augustus said, raising a finger, and turned to Isaac. “That was actually worse than you made it out to be.”
“I told you it was bleak.”
“Why do you bother with it?”
“I don’t know. It kind of helps?”
Augustus leaned in so he thought I couldn’t hear. “She’s a regular?” I couldn’t hear Isaac’s comment, but Augustus responded, “I’ll say.” He clasped Isaac by both shoulders and then took a half step away from him. “Tell Hazel about clinic.”
Isaac leaned a hand against the snack table and focused his huge eye on me. “Okay, so I went into clinic this morning, and I was telling my surgeon that I’d rather be deaf than blind. And he said, ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ and I was, like, ‘Yeah, I realize it doesn’t work that way; I’m just saying I’d rather be deaf than blind if I had the choice, which I realize I don’t have,’ and he said, ‘Well, the good news is that you won’t be deaf,’ and I was like, ‘Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.’”
“He sounds like a winner,” I said. “I’m gonna try to get me some eye cancer just so I can make this guy’s acquaintance.”
“Good luck with that. All right, I should go. Monica’s waiting for me. I gotta look at her a lot while I can.”
“Counterinsurgence tomorrow?” Augustus asked.
“Definitely.” Isaac turned and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Augustus Waters turned to me. “Literally,” he said.
“Literally?” I asked.
“We are literally in the heart of Jesus,” he said. “I thought we were in a church basement, but we are literally in the heart of Jesus.”
“Someone should tell Jesus,” I said. “I mean, it’s gotta be dangerous, storing children with cancer in your heart.”
“I would tell Him myself,” Augustus said, “but unfortunately I am literally stuck inside of His heart, so He won’t be able to hear me.” I laughed. He shook his head, just looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Augustus half smiled. “Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.” A brief awkward silence ensued. Augustus plowed through: “I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything.”
I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, “I’m not beau—”
“You’re like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman.”
“Never seen it,” I said.
“Really?” he asked. “Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can’t help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It’s your autobiography, so far as I can tell.”
His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn’t even know that guys could turn me on—not, like, in real life.
A younger girl walked past us. “How’s it going, Alisa?” he asked. She smiled and mumbled, “Hi, Augustus.” “Memorial people,” he explained. Memorial was the big research hospital. “Where do you go?”
“Children’s,” I said, my voice smaller than I expected it to be. He nodded. The conversation seemed over. “Well,” I said, nodding vaguely toward the steps that led us out of the Literal Heart of Jesus. I tilted my cart onto its wheels and started walking. He limped beside me. “So, see you next time, maybe?” I asked.
“You should see it,” he said. “V for Vendetta, I mean.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll look it up.”
“No. With me. At my house,” he said. “Now.”
I stopped walking. “I hardly know you, Augustus Waters. You could be an ax murderer.”
He nodded. “True enough, Hazel Grace.” He walked past me, his shoulders filling out his green knit polo shirt, his back straight, his steps lilting just slightly to the right as he walked steady and confident on what I had determined was a prosthetic leg. Osteosarcoma sometimes takes a limb to check you out. Then, if it likes you, it takes the rest.
I followed him upstairs, losing ground as I made my way up slowly, stairs not being a field of expertise for my lungs.
And then we were out of Jesus’s heart and in the parking lot, the spring air just on the cold side of perfect, the late-afternoon light heavenly in its hurtfulness.
Mom wasn’t there yet, which was unusual, because Mom was almost always waiting for me. I glanced around and saw that a tall, curvy brunette girl had Isaac pinned against the stone wall of the church, kissing him rather aggressively. They were close enough to me that I could hear the weird noises of their mouths together, and I could hear him saying, “Always,” and her saying, “Always,” in return.
Suddenly standing next to me, Augustus half whispered, “They’re big believers in PDA.”
“What’s with the ‘always’?” The slurping sounds intensified.
“Always is their thing. They’ll always love each other and whatever. I would conservatively estimate they have texted each other the word always four million times in the last year.”
A couple more cars drove up, taking Michael and Alisa away. It was just Augustus and me now, watching Isaac and Monica, who proceeded apace as if they were not leaning against a place of worship. His hand reached for her boob over her shirt and pawed at it, his palm still while his fingers moved around. I wondered if that felt good. Didn’t seem like it would, but I decided to forgive Isaac on the grounds that he was going blind. The senses must feast while there is yet hunger and whatever.
“Imagine taking that last drive to the hospital,” I said quietly. “The last time you’ll ever drive a car.”
Without looking over at me, Augustus said, “You’re killing my vibe here, Hazel Grace. I’m trying to observe young love in its many-splendored awkwardness.”
“I think he’s hurting her boob,” I said.
“Yes, it’s difficult to ascertain whether he is trying to arouse her or perform a breast exam.” Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips.
“Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.”
“Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.
“The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally.”
“A hamartia?” he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.
“A fatal flaw,” I explained, turning away from him. I stepped toward the curb, leaving Augustus Waters behind me, and then I heard a car start down the street. It was Mom. She’d been waiting for me to, like, make friends or whatever.
I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger welling up inside of me. I don’t even know what the feeling was, really, just that there was a lot of it, and I wanted to smack Augustus Waters and also replace my lungs with lungs that didn’t suck at being lungs. I was standing with my Chuck Taylors on the very edge of the curb, the oxygen tank ball-and-chaining in the cart by my side, and right as my mom pulled up, I felt a hand grab mine.
I yanked my hand free but turned back to him.
“They don’t kill you unless you light them,” he said as Mom arrived at the curb. “And I’ve never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing.”
“It’s a metaphor,” I said, dubious. Mom was just idling.
“It’s a metaphor,” he said.
“You choose your behaviors based on their metaphorical resonances…” I said.
“Oh, yes.” He smiled. The big, goofy, real smile. “I’m a big believer in metaphor, Hazel Grace.”
I turned to the car. Tapped the window. It rolled down. “I’m going to a movie with Augustus Waters,” I said. “Please record the next several episodes of the ANTM marathon for me.”
CHAPTER TWO
Augustus Waters drove horrifically. Whether stopping or starting, everything happened with a tremendous JOLT. I flew against the seat belt of his Toyota SUV each time he braked, and my neck snapped backward each time he hit the gas. I might have been nervous—what with sitting in the car of a strange boy on the way to his house, keenly aware that my crap lungs complicate efforts to fend off unwanted advances—but his driving was so astonishingly poor that I could think of nothing else.
We’d gone perhaps a mile in jagged silence before Augustus said, “I failed the driving test three times.”
“You don’t say.”
He laughed, nodding. “Well, I can’t feel pressure in old Prosty, and I can’t get the hang of driving left-footed. My doctors say most amputees can drive with no problem, but…yeah. Not me. Anyway, I go in for my fourth driving test, and it goes about like this is going.” A half mile in front of us, a light turned red. Augustus slammed on the brakes, tossing me into the triangular embrace of the seat belt. “Sorry. I swear to God I am trying to be gentle. Right, so anyway, at the end of the test, I totally thought I’d failed again, but the instructor was like, ‘Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn’t technically unsafe.’”
“I’m not sure I agree,” I said. “I suspect Cancer Perk.” Cancer Perks are the little things cancer kids get that regular kids don’t: basketballs signed by sports heroes, free passes on late homework, unearned driver’s licenses, etc.
“Yeah,” he said. The light turned green. I braced myself. Augustus slammed the gas.
“You know they’ve got hand controls for people who can’t use their legs,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe someday.” He sighed in a way that made me wonder whether he was confident about the existence of someday. I knew osteosarcoma was highly curable, but still.
There are a number of ways to establish someone’s approximate survival expectations without actually asking. I used the classic: “So, are you in school?” Generally, your parents pull you out of school at some point if they expect you to bite it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m at North Central. A year behind, though: I’m a sophomore. You?”
I considered lying. No one likes a corpse, after all. But in the end I told the truth. “No, my parents withdrew me three years ago.”
“Three years?” he asked, astonished.
I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.) It was, we were told, incurable.
I had a surgery called radical neck dissection, which is about as pleasant as it sounds. Then radiation. Then they tried some chemo for my lung tumors. The tumors shrank, then grew. By then, I was fourteen. My lungs started to fill up with water. I was looking pretty dead—my hands and feet ballooned; my skin cracked; my lips were perpetually blue. They’ve got this drug that makes you not feel so completely terrified about the fact that you can’t breathe, and I had a lot of it flowing into me through a PICC line, and more than a dozen other drugs besides. But even so, there’s a certain unpleasantness to drowning, particularly when it occurs over the course of several months. I finally ended up in the ICU with pneumonia, and my mom knelt by the side of my bed and said, “Are you ready, sweetie?” and I told her I was ready, and my dad just kept telling me he loved me in this voice that was not breaking so much as already broken, and I kept telling him that I loved him, too, and everyone was holding hands, and I couldn’t catch my breath, and my lungs were acting desperate, gasping, pulling me out of the bed trying to find a position that could get them air, and I was embarrassed by their desperation, disgusted that they wouldn’t just let go, and I remember my mom telling me it was okay, that I was okay, that I would be okay, and my father was trying so hard not to sob that when he did, which was regularly, it was an earthquake. And I remember wanting not to be awake.
Everyone figured I was finished, but my Cancer Doctor Maria managed to get some of the fluid out of my lungs, and shortly thereafter the antibiotics they’d given me for the pneumonia kicked in.
I woke up and soon got into one of those experimental trials that are famous in the Republic of Cancervania for Not Working. The drug was Phalanxifor, this molecule designed to attach itself to cancer cells and slow their growth. It didn’t work in about 70 percent of people. But it worked in me. The tumors shrank.
And they stayed shrunk. Huzzah, Phalanxifor! In the past eighteen months, my mets have hardly grown, leaving me with lungs that suck at being lungs but could, conceivably, struggle along indefinitely with the assistance of drizzled oxygen and daily Phalanxifor.
Admittedly, my Cancer Miracle had only resulted in a bit of purchased time. (I did not yet know the size of the bit.) But when telling Augustus Waters, I painted the rosiest possible picture, embellishing the miraculousness of the miracle.
“So now you gotta go back to school,” he said.
“I actually can’t,” I explained, “because I already got my GED. So I’m taking classes at MCC,” which was our community college.
“A college girl,” he said, nodding. “That explains the aura of sophistication.” He smirked at me. I shoved his upper arm playfully. I could feel the muscle right beneath the skin, all tense and amazing.
We made a wheels-screeching turn into a subdivision with eight-foot-high stucco walls. His house was the first one on the left. A two-story colonial. We jerked to a halt in his driveway.
I followed him inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway was engraved in cursive with the words Home Is Where the Heart Is, and the entire house turned out to be festooned in such observations. Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget read an illustration above the coatrack. True Love Is Born from Hard Times promised a needlepointed pillow in their antique-furnished living room. Augustus saw me reading. “My parents call them Encouragements,” he explained. “They’re everywhere.”
•••
His mom and dad called him Gus. They were making enchiladas in the kitchen (a piece of stained glass by the sink read in bubbly letters Family Is Forever). His mom was putting chicken into tortillas, which his dad then rolled up and placed in a glass pan. They didn’t seem too surprised by my arrival, which made sense: The fact that Augustus made me feel special did not necessarily indicate that I was special. Maybe he brought home a different girl every night to show her movies and feel her up.
“This is Hazel Grace,” he said, by way of introduction.
“Just Hazel,” I said.
“How’s it going, Hazel?” asked Gus’s dad. He was tall—almost as tall as Gus—and skinny in a way that parentally aged people usually aren’t.
“Okay,” I said.
“How was Isaac’s Support Group?”
“It was incredible,” Gus said.
“You’re such a Debbie Downer,” his mom said. “Hazel, do you enjoy it?”
I paused a second, trying to figure out if my response should be calibrated to please Augustus or his parents. “Most of the people are really nice,” I finally said.
“That’s exactly what we found with families at Memorial when we were in the thick of it with Gus’s treatment,” his dad said. “Everybody was so kind. Strong, too. In the darkest days, the Lord puts the best people into your life.”
Product details
- Publisher : Penguin Books
- Publication date : April 8, 2014
- Edition : Reprint
- Language : English
- Print length : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 014242417X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0142424179
- Item Weight : 11.9 ounces
- Reading age : 14 - 17 years
- Dimensions : 1.1 x 5.4 x 8.2 inches
- Grade level : 9 - 12
- Lexile measure : 850L
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,054 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan), and The Fault in Our Stars. His many accolades include the Printz Medal, a Printz Honor, and the Edgar Award. John has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. With his brother, Hank, John is one half of the Vlogbrothers (youtube.com/vlogbrothers) and co-created the online educational series CrashCourse (youtube.com/crashcourse). You can join the millions who follow him on Twitter @johngreen and Instagram @johngreenwritesbooks or visit him online at johngreenbooks.com.
John lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.
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Customers find this book captivating and well-written, describing it as a unique love story that makes them cry and laugh. The book features wonderful characters with witty banter, and customers appreciate how it makes them think about life. They describe it as a touching book that feels very real.
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Customers find the book captivating and charming, describing it as a must-read.
"...Great book." Read more
"...Seriously though, this was such a great book. So many lines that just kick you right in the gut...." Read more
"...Great read!" Read more
"...This is a sad book, as its premise clearly tells you, but it is beautiful and happy as well...." Read more
Customers find the book heart-wrenching, describing it as a tear-jerker that made them both cry and laugh.
"...He's hot, one legged, funny, and hopeful. Cancer-free and in remission, Augustus Waters is what cancer patients hope to be one day...." Read more
"...The writing is stark, beautiful, humorous, sad. About the support group: "..." Read more
"...fragile point in their lives and living and loving each other is heartbreaking and beautiful...." Read more
"...I get why it is a tear jerker...perhaps my tears are a bit tougher to jerk...which is funny because I have been known to cry at commercials...." Read more
Customers praise the book's unique love story, describing it as a very sweet and moving narrative with a great storyline.
"...This is the perfect book! It has wonderful characters, a great story ans is magnificently written. It's hard not to like it...." Read more
"...A beautiful story that also ripped my heart out and slowly pieced it back together. I can now add a fourth...." Read more
"Great story and great writing...." Read more
"...I chose this rating because I really think it was an amazing story. This is a story about growing up, sacrificing, love and drama...." Read more
Customers praise the book's writing style, describing it as well-crafted and poetic, making it a quick and thoughtful read.
"...good book that I do recommend picking up if you're looking for a well written, genuine live story." Read more
"...It's pretty short and a therefore a quick, easy read. Of course, the first question out of everyone's mouth is, "What's it about?"..." Read more
"This book is so beautifully written with incredible depth of emotion...." Read more
"...I loved that the characters were each so unique. Well written, perfectly described, I felt as I knew the characters.... Each character, got into..." Read more
Customers find the book thought-provoking, making them think about life and being inspirational and heartwarming.
"...and conversations between the characters are often funny and thought provoking...." Read more
"...School fellow classmates, Lily Clark also states, “This book was inspiring and heartwarming...." Read more
"...Hazel is inquisitive and smart, just like Augustus; they contemplate life, purpose, philosophy unlike day-to day teenagers who can't imagine their..." Read more
"...It's heartbreaking, and heartwarming all at the same time. I recommend you read this for real and not just wait for the movie to come out...." Read more
Customers enjoy the characters in the book, finding them wonderful and funny, though some find them predictable.
"...I fell in love with the plot, the characters, the selfless acts, the relationships and the realism along with everything else embedded in the few..." Read more
"...I loved the characters and how real they were...." Read more
"Honestly, I read this in a day. I FELL IN LOVE. I fell in love with the characters, I fell in love with the way the story was told...." Read more
"...I loved the characters and their ability to laugh at their own sufferings...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's wit, particularly its witty banter and dialogue that makes them laugh and cry.
"...Their banter, with each other and with others, is witty and intelligent and often irreverently funny...." Read more
"...You must pick it up and read it! I laughed, I cheered, I cried.......I couldn't ask for anything more...." Read more
""The Fault in Our Stars" is an incredible book to say the least. It made me laugh and it made me cry, a lot. I wept and then wept some more...." Read more
"...But in all seriousness, this book made me laugh and cry and is just pure perfection...." Read more
Customers find the book heartfelt and touching, noting that it made them feel something and felt very real.
"...very real, their strength, humour, and their charm to be riveting and touching...." Read more
"...I choose to use the names they use for one another - is tender, deep, sweet, and real...." Read more
"...ability to take such a heart-wrenching topic and balance it with humor, love, and growth proves he is genius...." Read more
"...The Fault In Our Stars is very touching, and within the span of it's pages, John Green was able to fully connect his characters and world to me as..." Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2016The best stories are about memory.
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is quite possibly the best standalone novel I have ever read and is certainly the most phenomenal book I’ve had the privilege to experience in the year 2013. It is my third favorite story and favorite non-fantasy novel. The title comes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and it sets the perfect tone for this story written in the first person by Hazel, a sixteen year old girl in the regressive stage of lung cancer who nevertheless is required to cart around an oxygen tank because (as she so perfectly puts it) her “lungs suck at being lungs.” Her mother forces her to go to a cancer patient/survivor group where she proceeds to exercise her considerable teenage snark and wit along with her friend Isaac who is suffering from a type of cancer that eventually requires the removal of an eye.
One day Hazel catches the attention of a boy named Augustus and their romance is as breathtaking and expedient as it is completely genuine and uncontrived. Augustus has recovered from bone cancer that left him with a prosthetic leg, but did nothing to diminish his spirit. She can scarcely believe he’s as perfect as he projects and indeed feels as though she’s found his hamartia or fatal flaw when he puts a cigarette in his mouth. Hazel is of course livid that anyone who survived cancer would willingly place themselves into its way again, but Augustus never lights them using the act as a metaphor of having “the killing thing right between your teeth, but you not giving it the power to do its killing.”
Both of them together have enough wit and snark to drown the world in metaphors and sarcasm with just the barest dash of bitterness for their plight. Hazel whom Augustus calls “Hazel Grace” for most of the novel feels incredibly guilty that she’s allowed Augustus to fall for her as she and her family expect her cancer to return full force at any moment, and yet their relationship parallels the ever moving train of her mortality. So much so that Hazel shares with him that her favorite book is a story by the reclusive author Peter Van Houten called An Imperial Affliction.
“My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn’t like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising that affections feels like a betrayal.”
Van Houten’s work is very meta to the larger story at hand being about a girl named Anna who suffers from cancer and her one-eyed mother who grows tulips. But Hazel makes it very clear that this is not a cancer book in the same way that The Fault in Our Stars is not a cancer book. Anna grows progressively sicker and her mother falls in love with a Dutch Tulip Man who has a great deal of money and exotic ideas about how to treat Anna’s cancer, but just when the DTM and Anna’s mom are about to possibly get married and Anna is about to start a new treatment, the book ends right in the middle of a-
Exactly.
This drives Hazel and eventually Augustus up the wall to not know what happened to everyone from Anna’s hamster Sisyphus to Anna herself. Hazel assumes that Anna became too sick to continue writing (the assumption being that her story was first person just as Hazel’s is), but for Van Houten to not have finished it seems like the ultimate literary betrayal.
As terrified as Hazel was to share this joy with Augustus (and god knows I understand that feeling) it was the best thing she could’ve done because they now share the obsession and the insistence that the characters deserve an ending.
The conversations of Hazel and Augustus are not typical teenage conversations, but they’re not typical teenagers. Mortality flavors all of their discussions and leads to elegance such as
“The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself. And even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us.”
They speak of memory and calculate how there are fourteen dead people for everyone alive and realize that remembering fourteen people isn’t that difficult. We could all do that if we tried that way no one has to be forgotten. But will we then fight over who we are allowed to remember? Or will the fourteen just be added to those we can never forget? They read each other the poetry of T.S Eliot, the haunting lines of Prufrock,
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Til human voices wake us, and we drown.”
And as Augustus reads Hazel her favorite book she
“…fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
The quotes from this story are among the most poignant and beautiful I have ever seen.
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
When I finished this I thought to myself, “How am I going to read anything else? How will I find something to match this? How can I pick up another book and not expect it to resonate with this haunting beauty, this tragedy ringed with comic teenage snark and tones that are themselves tragic in their sarcasm like whistling in the ninth circle of hell or laughing uproariously at the monster?” I realized I was lost. I could think of no negative critique unless you count the fact that the two main characters have Dawson’s Creek Syndrome where they’re teenagers who speak as if they were philosophers, but then again Bill Watterson did the same thing with a boy and a stuffed tiger.
You realize the story’s hamartia doesn’t matter. That the fact that the plot may be cliched is unimportant and that dwelling on such trivialities is in and of itself a fatal flaw. This story is so much more than the letters and words on each page. It’s the triumph of morning over night when the night grows ever longer. It’s the dream of hope when you’ve done nothing but dine on despair. It is sad? Yes. It is heartbreaking? More so. Is it worth reading? Has anything sad and heartbreaking not been worth reading? The story of Hazel and Augusts deserves to be read just as the story of Anna, her mother, and dear hamster Sisyphus deserves an ending, and that becomes their exploit to seek out reclusive Peter Van Houten so that the characters can be properly laid to rest and remembered.
The best stories are about memory.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2012Although I wasn't very satisfied with a previous novel of John Green's, AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES, his other books, LOOKING FOR ALASKA & PAPER TOWNS, were phenomenal and are some of my all-time favorites. Like its aforementioned brethren, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is a tearjerker, but also well worth reading because it exposes heavier subject matter we all tend to neglect in our everyday lives. What, exactly? Cancer.
I was introduced to TFIOS through one of my good friends in mid-February and, at first, was apprehensive about buying it on my kindle because (a.) I hadn't been satisfied with how AAofK ended, and (b.) I was leery towards any book that was labeled a "cancer book", thinking that I would barely be able to read through the first 50 pages without feeling too depressed and wanting to throw the book away.
Of course, I was wrong and had underestimated John Green's ability to weave such a hush-hushed topic into a story that could end up on the NYT Bestsellers List. As the book infamously states within its first few pages, "Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.)". I was stunned at how the narrator, Hazel, was able to take her diagnosis so light-hearted it was almost like you weren't reading her story but you actually were her, living through the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations. Throughout the novel, I felt "grand", like I was "on a roller coaster that only goes up", pun intended; every chance I got to read, I did; whether in school or at home, I could simply not put the book down.
The main character, Hazel, is a sarcastic and lovable 16 year old girl who has overcome the impossible: stage IV thyroid cancer. Withdrawn from school at 13, her parents and an author who doesn't know she exists, Peter Van Houten, have become "her best friends". She dreads going to Support Group every Wednesday, a "depressing as hell" place where other cancer survivors talk about their struggles. Until she meets Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor (osteosarcoma) who has a prosthetic leg, a limp, and smokes metaphorical cigarettes, which he explains as: "You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing".
Having found out that Hazel spent her One Wish on a trip to Disney Land, Augustus, having saved his, spurs a trip to Amsterdam and organizes a meeting with the author Peter Van Houten, whom Hazel is dying (figuratively) to meet so she can finally get answers to the ending of An Imperial Affliction, her favorite novel.
As it turns out, Peter Van Houten is a selfish alcoholic and no more help than how AIA ended - in the middle of a sentence. Furthermore, while on the trip, Hazel finds out that Augustus has gotten cancer again and that it's fatal. For the rest of the book, Hazel tries to deal with a dying Augustus and then a dead Augustus because, no matter what, "That's the thing about pain...It demands to be felt".
Heartwarming and eventually heartbreaking, THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is an amazing love story about growing up and moving on that you can read over and over and, unlike others, never get tired of it.
Top reviews from other countries
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LoriReviewed in Brazil on February 10, 20145.0 out of 5 stars Imperdível!
A narrativa conta a estória de Hazel que aos treze anos foi diagnosticada com um câncer agressivo. Contudo, com o uso de uma nova droga, os médicos conseguiram reduzir e interromper o desenvolvimento de seu tumor. Aos dezesseis anos, em estágio terminal, seus pulmões não conseguem funcionar sozinhos e ela está sempre com um tubo de oxigênio em seus nariz. Em uma de suas reuniões em um grupo de ajuda para crianças portadores de câncer ela conhece Augustus Waters (o Gus), um jovem que possui a perna amputado em decorrência de um câncer que ele conseguiu vencer. A descoberta do amor e da alegria de viver é que vai delinear o enredo desta linda estória. Aqui, o câncer não é romantizado, não haverá atos incríveis de altruísmo, de superação, rendição ou pessoas que realmente deixaram sua marca no mundo. Não. São apenas dois extraordinários adolescentes descobrindo a vida.
Há um passagem do livro, na qual John Green faz referência à peça Julius Cesar de Shakespeare: "A culpa, caro Brutus, não está nas estrelas, mas em nós mesmos". O que Julius Cesar inferia é que não há um destino traçado, nós é quem fazemos a nossa própria estória. O enredo e o título do livro, no entanto, demonstram exatamente o contrário: temos o livre arbítrio para alterar inúmeras coisas na nossa vida, mas algumas coisas já estão fadadas a acontecer, já estão escritas nas estrelas e por mais que tentamos não conseguimos alterá-la.
O livro é lindamente escrito, cheio de metáforas e ironia. Os diálogos são fantásticos e os personagens extremamente cativantes. Se ele é triste? Sim, mas não é só isso, ele traz uma montanha russa de emoções. Eu sofri, chorei e também ri com os personagens que são extremamente reais e críveis. A culpa é das estrelas é um livro imperdível que vai te deixar com o coração partido.
Nelou KeramatiReviewed in Canada on February 13, 20165.0 out of 5 stars Okay? Okay.
John Green’s approach to the ultimate existential problem (time) is rather brilliant. He has demonstrated with gut-wrenching accuracy, what it is like to feel like a ticking time-bomb, and what makes this love story exceptionally thought-provoking, is that it actually IS thought-provoking. Not simply because of its premise, but the way in which it is dealt with; seemingly mundane, and in every way imaginable, extraordinary.
For children to be grappling with life-crises most adults postpone until old age is heart-breaking as it is, but also unfathomably eye-opening. And the questions raised, while paint an ugly picture of the cruel reality of being ill, help extricate nuances (by definition, small and seemingly insignificant) which are surprisingly powerful in changing one’s mindset about why we are here, why it is transient, and whether or not that’s ok.
I was shook to the core by this narrative, and though it was becoming painful to sob uncontrollably every few pages or so, it was also incredibly cathartic because every single word confirmed a reality I know exists, but which I would never want to experience for myself.
The Fault in our Stars is unprecedented. It is raw, ugly, spellbinding, beautiful, infuriating, heart-breaking, and most importantly, it forces you to feel.
It has dawned on me that all things—whether in or out of existence—pertain to the ultimate existential crisis. Not simply as relevant to us as human begins, but as fundamental as what it means to be a rock. To be a collection of molecules devoid of what we as humans deem as ‘awareness’.
It would take a lifetime to decipher the enigma of what life is, and at best it seems, the most satisfactory conclusion is: that we simply do not know. And it can seem disheartening, not knowing what it is about life we cling onto so desperately, and why we fear its loss the most, even though there are losses far more excruciating within the realm of our experience: loss of hope, loss of freedom, loss of self, of dignity, of time.
And there it is: time. The one commodity we falsely assume we have enough of. And once you have managed to grapple with its uncompromising nature, once you think you have planned your life well enough to do all that matters to you with the time you've been given, you only wind up with more questions than answers; and not the kind of answers you find, but the kind of answers you concoct. And we do so, because not knowing what lurks in the dark is infinitely more terrifying than the death sentence itself.
So what it is about, this 'life'? Is it about living it as comfortably as you can manage? Is it about self-actualization? About leaving something behind? Is it ultimately about deciphering it? And most importantly, is this 'meaning of life' universal, or is it as personal as it can possibly get?
The most comfort I have found in questioning virtually everything there is to question has been this: That most certainly, the only thing certain thing about life and death is uncertainty. And I’ve found that acknowledging this fact has in many ways relinquished my responsibility of a life-long pursuit for answers I will never get. In some ways, that is the simultaneous beauty and pitfall of philosophy: raising more unanswerable questions, but broadening horizons in the process.
So what do you prefer? Do you prefer never loving, never laughing, never experiencing neither the peaks nor the valleys of life, so that once death comes, you can easily part with this ‘life’ you have not lived? Or do you want experience every beautiful and ugly facet of life alike, so that when it comes to part with it, you simply cannot?
It seems to me that if parting with my life is not the most tragic, frightening, and unbearable thing imaginable, then my dreams have not been big enough; that I have not been living a full enough life. And the last thing I'd want on my death-bed (or within the last seconds of still retaining my consciousness) is feeling like: 'I cannot believe I could, and I didn't.'
I believe not having anything to lose is the most tragic thing about loss.
Amazon CustomerReviewed in Australia on January 9, 20155.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreakingly Amazing
Having watched the movie and recently read 'Looking for Alaska' I decided it
was about time I gave this novel a go. Needless to say, it was amazing and I had it done and dusted within a day. The Fault in our Stars is a thought- provoking exploration of love and pain. Having experienced an immediate family member slowly declining and then passing away from cancer, I found the novel a realistic portrayal of the emotions of those who are facing a terminal illness as well as that of their loved ones. I also recently visited Amsterdam and thought that Hazel's descriptions of this magical place were amazing, there could not have been a better setting for Hazel and Gus' love to blossom. Basically, read this novel, you will not regret it. I burst into tears at 'I just wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes' and then managed to remain crying for the last fifth of the book. The world and our existence is one confusing concept, but despite the inevitable heartbreak and pain, love is worth spending your existence on. Read this novel!
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LettriceReviewed in Italy on June 20, 20145.0 out of 5 stars Ridere e piangere insieme
Normalmente non sono un’amante dei libri strappalacrime. Preferisco i libri e gli scrittori più sfumati, che indagano i toni grigi della vita, le emozioni più confuse e perciò più vere. I grandi drammi mi sembrano sempre troppo facili.
Ma il modo migliore per descrivere questo libro sono le parole di un mio studente, in una classe in cui l’ho dato da leggere:
“Questo libro è strano. Mi fa ridere, però allo stesso tempo mi fa anche piangere.”
The fault in our stars affronta sì uno dei drammi peggiori della vita – la morte, la morte incombente e ineluttabile e in giovane età -, ma lo affronta come piace a me, scavando nel profondo delle cose. Non è tutto una lacrima o tutto una lezione di vita; le lezioni di vita le trovi solo se vuoi, e sono piccole e perciò fondamentali. E ci sono passaggi estremamente comici, e ce ne sono altri di una crudezza indicibile – la definizione dei malati di cancro come effetti collaterali, scarti nel processo di evoluzione.
Augustus Waters è uno dei personaggi più veri di cui io abbia mai letto – e più incantevoli. È impossibile non innamorarsene, magari in modo materno come è capitato a me, ed è impossibile non credergli. Nulla viene edulcorato: la ragazza malata di tumore al cervello, che la malattia rende crudele ma che non si sa se incolpare della sua crudeltà, perché forse è il cancro a parlare per lei; il ragazzo che diventa cieco e che viene mollato, perché nella vita spesso accade così e non tutti continuano ad amarci quando non siamo più interi; il peggioramento delle condizioni di Hazel e di Augustus, di cui non ci viene risparmiato nulla. E infine, la capacità e il bisogno di amare, che io non ho mai capito così tanto, e ammirato così tanto come in questo libro.
Non mi è facile aggiungere qualcosa senza rovinare la magia del testo; è un libro privo di speranza, perché non offre miracoli, né fisici né mentali – non si guarisce dalle malattie terminali, non si guarisce dalla morte di una figlia, non si guarisce dalla voglia di vivere senza poter vivere; ed è un libro pieno di speranza, perché mostra come sia possibile vivere mille vite in pochi anni, in pochi mesi, in pochi giorni – l’infinito in una serie di istanti rubati.
Il primo bacio di Hazel e Gus ha luogo nella casa di Anna Frank e non credo ci sia modo migliore di spiegare come questo romanzo trovi la vita nella morte; eppure non fornisce false e semplici risposte e illusioni, nessuno dei personaggi vorrebbe vivere la vita che ha ricevuto, tutti farebbero a cambio; e credo che la perfezione si raggiunga in Van Houten, che legge dal vivo la storia di Hazel e Gus e non riesce ad usarla per cambiarsi, per riprendersi, per rinascere: non ci sono risposte. Non ci sono verità finali, conversioni, illuminazioni.
C’è il tentativo di rendere speciale quello che abbiamo, anche se quello che abbiamo fa schifo, e c’è la sfida più importante di tutte le vite di tutti gli esseri umani: ridere mentre si piange.
Come dovremmo saper fare ogni giorno.
Andrew D WrightReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 18, 20145.0 out of 5 stars Stop whatever you're doing, you have to read this book.
It goes against nature. A book whose teenage protagonists are dying of cancer shouldn't make you smile, but it does. Again and again and again. And laugh out loud too. There's been an awful lot written about John Green's publishing phenomenon; The Fault In Our Stars, but I'm sorry, I have to add to the chatter in the blog-o-sphere. I can't let this one without adding my four penneth.
This is a beautiful, beautiful book. The characters are so coruscatingly real that simply writing about them still brings tears to my eyes. The Fault In Our Stars is a line from Shakespeare, and the tale is pure tragedy but with a twist, a twist that should put a spring in your step and a smile on your face. Look beyond the canular tubes and the oxygen tanks, the phalanxifor (made up cancer medicine) that keeps Hazel Grace Lancaster alive well beyond her bleak prognosis and we get an opportunity to see, feel and experience how very precious life is. This close to death we really feel alive, we really get that totally unique never-to-be-repeatedness of every moment.
Hazel - the book's written in a very convincing first person POV (point of view) - is our heroine. She's dying of secondary cancers which are gnawing away at her lungs, reducing their efficiency, meaning she has to pull an oxygen tank on a trolley around with her. She goes to a support group in a church where other teenagers dying of cancer gather in a kind of mawkish group hug to stoically urge each other "to live our best lives today!" But mawkish this book isn't, for Hazel falls in love with Augustus Waters, an elegantly beautiful cancer-survivor who's absorbed more joie de vivre in his short and difficult life than most of us manage over the entire span. He is philosophical, clever, sensitive, funny and so intense you sit up straighter when he walks onto the page. He is everything we'd all want to be. He dangles an unlit cigarette from his mouth at key moments, not to smoke - what giddy craziness that would be - but as a metaphor for his continued existence. "I have it between my lips but I don't give it the power to kill me by lighting it."
Augustus and Hazel fall in love, crazy, giddy-love, made all the more poignant - but never in a sentimentally fluffy way - by the death watch tick tock of their illnesses. She's on the edge, but in this position, with the wind from the precipice blowing in her face she can truly feel alive. Augustus Waters has been in remission since the osteosarcoma that was threatening his life responded to chemo and he had his leg preventatively loped off just below the knee. These are young people who represent the best of what humanity has to offer, they are free-thinking despite the heavy chain of mortality. The clarity of the dialogue leaves you breathless, Green spent some time amongst children suffering from cancer and you can hear that experience in his every cadence. There's heaps of gallows humour, but amongst it a sense of the urgency and engagement with all experience that the worried well never achieve.
There's much adolescent existentialist philosophising here, but it's never pretentious because if people who are quite literally on the edge can't explore such deep waters who's going to? The talk is clever, genuine and poignant as well as being insightful. The book spares no blushes or pulls no punches, we witness the surgery of a friend of Hazel and Augustus from support group. It's a Hobson's Choice surgery that saves his life but at the expense of his cancer-riddled remaining eye, making him permanently blind. Poor Isaac rehearses for us an idea that crops up through the book as Hazel worries about falling in love with Augustus. Before the operation to take away his one good eye, Isaac's girlfriend dumps him, unable to bare the thought she might one day have to break it off with a blind boy. This of course would be so horribly mean, so, she reasons, not irrationally - the narrative even let's us explore this perspective - she decides to get it done before the op. Hazel agonises about becoming just such an emotional grenade for Augustus as her terminal prognosis, though paused by the drug trial, is still very much a dead cert. She doesn't want to destroy him in when she dies and he is left all alone.
But love finds a way and Hazel and Augustus, as they so beautifully put it, fall deep into a quantum entanglement all their own. This book is clever, sassy, honest, witty and deeply, deeply respectful of its subject matter without ever becoming sentimental. Hazel provides just the right voice, a voice suffused with wisdom and a desperate sorrow at her situation, without ever wet with self-pity.
A novel of death and life and love and suffering and how we survive. The loving, meaningful portrayal of the courage of Hazel and Augustus's parents is also very touching. We're left with the impression that our own sensibilities about engaging with such people - those branded with a terminal diagnosis and their devastated families - leaves us shadows of the brave people they are. Yes, they're close to death, yes they're possibly literally counting the breaths to the end, but during that time, despite the debilitating sickness, they are possibly more alive than many people with the luxury of many more years ahead of them. This books stares death in the face and it's the sallow-faced reaper who blinks because life in the midst of death is as poignant and wonderful and sad as a soon-to-be broken butterfly.
You have to read this book. Right now.
A very rare five stars *****






































