The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 4/5 cats
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice.
john green, like his characters, always makes the funny choice. and readers, like “women” are really just looking for a sense of humor. and the sense of humor goes a long way towards pardoning other sins. because come on, john green – your characters are so unlikely. ordinarily, i would squirm at such clever, verbose, insightful, literary-reference-dropping teenagers. but they are so funny and charming, always. your humor is what saves you from my criticism.
View Spoiler »not really a spoiler, but best be on the safe side. (and i can’t believe i had to use capital letters there. felt…unnatural) but the point of that is – ah, to have been able, at seventeen, to take the emotional out of the equation and view the situation so critically. for me, anyway – it wouldn’t have happened. i would have been overwhelmed with gratitude and any more intellectual approach to the situation would have been inconceivable.
but who cares – i don’t even know why i went on that boring tangent. because john green (when i say his name, you should see little hearts coming out from my ears – ♥john green♥) has enough skills to make these potentially unbelievable characters consistently entertaining and to do the unthinkable of making a YA cancer book very very funny.
when i was an emotion-blinded teen, reading all those lurlene mcdaniels books, who knew that someday, there would be funny Ya-tragedy books?
this is not funny:
but john green is. and i’m sure if i read Six Months to Live now, it would feel manipulative and cloying. (but i would probably still love it with all my nostalgia) this book is not at all manipulative and never cloying. it’s all wisecracking in the valley of the shadow of death, in a genuinely funny, not snarky, way. okay, occasionally snarky. they are teens, after all.
(jesus, i may have forgotten to mention that this book is funny. did i? mention it?)
but it is also about the dangers of hero-worship and the desire to leave something in the world that is yours after you go, and anne frank (yes. anne freaking frank)
♥john green♥ is just a skillful and sophisticated YA author, who has really raised the bar for realistic YA everywhere. (baffling an 85-year-old co-worker of mine who wanted to write to our company to have this reclassified as adult fiction because he read it, not knowing anything about it, and figured it was a mistake. “no, he’s a teen novelist.” “but the new york times reviewed it as an adult novel.” “incorrect. it says “teen” on the dust jacket. printz award. you just read a YA book, dude! hhahaahahahaa! and you liked it!! score for YA!!” (this last sentence did not actually happen, but the rest of it did))
great isaac and augustus relationship – he does boy-friends so well. great parents for hazel. great job as a female narrator. (and a definite departure from the margo/alaska girl this time.) great great great. (also, funny)
so – four stars cats. because after serious reflection, i still think paper towns is better, and needs to bask in its five-stars cats-from-karen-dom all alone. also – this book did not make me cry, goddamn it. i thought it would be an easy cry. but no. damn these eyes.
