I have many thoughts, and you got at a lot of them here. I gave the characters a pass on being so pretentiously witty, but I couldn't decide if that was because they were both teenagers and dying, or because Kate Rudd did a good job with the audio. I do think John Green does a good job with female POV characters, because it makes it harder for him to manic pixie any of the characters. And it did jerk a puddle of tears out of me, but it was very calculated; the last third of the book is masterful tear jerking rather than masterful literature.
Yeah, the narration was really excellent, and probably saved a lot of the dialogue for me. (Though on a related note, there are a lot -- a lot -- of reviewers out there who seem to believe that pretentiousness is an inevitable result of illness, oi.)
life just lived through illness get less focus at that point. (Which is one reason why Isaac might be my favorite character later in the book; he's less about the pain oh the beautiful pain.)
Yes, exactly. Multiple people say explicitly in the book that pain doesn't buy grace. Or anything. See that entire parable about the little girl saint. And then the last third kind of sanctifies everyone's pain in this weird way. Like, the pain of losing Augustus was Hazel's doorway into coping with her fears for the people she loves after her death. Which . . . life is like that, sometimes. But it was bigger than that. I kept twitching about it, even though I really dug some of the ways he got at the ugliness of Augustus's death on a physical level.
I think the book does better with the chronic nature of illness and pain (which I agree he gets so right) than with disability. I was perplexed about how little Augustus' prosthetic (and the pains and inconveniences that are related to that) were a presence in the book, but maybe for able-bodied readers there was a lot and it only seemed like a little to me because I was being more practical about it. And Isaac's computer game made me burn with jealousy, but it served a good narrative purpose.
I liked the way Hazel was almost always dealing with under-oxygenation and what she could and couldn't manage, physically, but she didn't actually think about it. I mean, she wouldn't, necessarily. That's one of the things I think he got so right about pain, tangentially. I didn't actually realize how much pain she was in for the first chunk of the book until she said something offhand about it, and I was like 'well of course she's in pain,' and suddenly she made so much more sense to me. And there's this nice metaphor at one point about how pain pulls her inward such that dealing with the outside world is the effortful thing.
But anyway, rambling. I agree the secondary characters with physical disabilities were a bit oddly drawn. I kept wondering, actually, with Isaac, why he was doing certain things certain ways. Why did he not have a cane? Which I believe was never mentioned. And yeah, the computer game actually made me seethe a bit, as a completely unrealistic portrayal of adaptive tech in an otherwise "realistic" novel would. I mean, it's one thing to make up a miracle cancer drug, since what little biology we know of it actually makes sense. It's another to blithely assume there's a company out there willing/able to pour that sort of money into an entertainment product for blind teenagers. Ha. ahahaha.
(Also, did you listen to the author's note on the audio? I wanted to punch John Green in the mouth the entire time I was listening to it. It's all us/them, and "people with chronic illness all think existentially.")
Yes! I wrote and deleted about three different paragraphs on that in the review, but they all just sank into flailing and aaarghing, so. I mean, I do give him more credit than I would a lot of able-bodied authors writing this story. Not because he spent time working blah blah blah. But actually because of what he said about how this has been the book he has been not writing for twelve years. I understand that, because I have one of those books, and I get how it eats at you and practically screams from in you, but fights you for every word. And so that earned him some respect from me, because it suggests to me that his investment in this story was more sincere and less manipulative on the great spectrum of these things.
But yes. Punching in the face.
I do think the book did attempt to portray different modes of experience. Augustus's parents vs. Hazel's parents, for example. (And I do like that Hazel was both appalled with A's parents, but also ultimately respected them and their way of grieving.) And I did like that one throwaway scene where a girl in support group was all "Hazel's so brave!" and Hazel was like, "stfu, bitch," because it was basically the one example we got of an ill person not being "in the club," if you know what I mean. But then again part of Hazel's reaction to her is that this girl is in remission, this girl will be okay. So I'm not really sure what to do with that.
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momijizukamori and
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Date: 2013-01-13 08:39 pm (UTC)Yeah, the narration was really excellent, and probably saved a lot of the dialogue for me. (Though on a related note, there are a lot -- a lot -- of reviewers out there who seem to believe that pretentiousness is an inevitable result of illness, oi.)
life just lived through illness get less focus at that point. (Which is one reason why Isaac might be my favorite character later in the book; he's less about the pain oh the beautiful pain.)
Yes, exactly. Multiple people say explicitly in the book that pain doesn't buy grace. Or anything. See that entire parable about the little girl saint. And then the last third kind of sanctifies everyone's pain in this weird way. Like, the pain of losing Augustus was Hazel's doorway into coping with her fears for the people she loves after her death. Which . . . life is like that, sometimes. But it was bigger than that. I kept twitching about it, even though I really dug some of the ways he got at the ugliness of Augustus's death on a physical level.
I think the book does better with the chronic nature of illness and pain (which I agree he gets so right) than with disability. I was perplexed about how little Augustus' prosthetic (and the pains and inconveniences that are related to that) were a presence in the book, but maybe for able-bodied readers there was a lot and it only seemed like a little to me because I was being more practical about it. And Isaac's computer game made me burn with jealousy, but it served a good narrative purpose.
I liked the way Hazel was almost always dealing with under-oxygenation and what she could and couldn't manage, physically, but she didn't actually think about it. I mean, she wouldn't, necessarily. That's one of the things I think he got so right about pain, tangentially. I didn't actually realize how much pain she was in for the first chunk of the book until she said something offhand about it, and I was like 'well of course she's in pain,' and suddenly she made so much more sense to me. And there's this nice metaphor at one point about how pain pulls her inward such that dealing with the outside world is the effortful thing.
But anyway, rambling. I agree the secondary characters with physical disabilities were a bit oddly drawn. I kept wondering, actually, with Isaac, why he was doing certain things certain ways. Why did he not have a cane? Which I believe was never mentioned. And yeah, the computer game actually made me seethe a bit, as a completely unrealistic portrayal of adaptive tech in an otherwise "realistic" novel would. I mean, it's one thing to make up a miracle cancer drug, since what little biology we know of it actually makes sense. It's another to blithely assume there's a company out there willing/able to pour that sort of money into an entertainment product for blind teenagers. Ha. ahahaha.
(Also, did you listen to the author's note on the audio? I wanted to punch John Green in the mouth the entire time I was listening to it. It's all us/them, and "people with chronic illness all think existentially.")
Yes! I wrote and deleted about three different paragraphs on that in the review, but they all just sank into flailing and aaarghing, so. I mean, I do give him more credit than I would a lot of able-bodied authors writing this story. Not because he spent time working blah blah blah. But actually because of what he said about how this has been the book he has been not writing for twelve years. I understand that, because I have one of those books, and I get how it eats at you and practically screams from in you, but fights you for every word. And so that earned him some respect from me, because it suggests to me that his investment in this story was more sincere and less manipulative on the great spectrum of these things.
But yes. Punching in the face.
I do think the book did attempt to portray different modes of experience. Augustus's parents vs. Hazel's parents, for example. (And I do like that Hazel was both appalled with A's parents, but also ultimately respected them and their way of grieving.) And I did like that one throwaway scene where a girl in support group was all "Hazel's so brave!" and Hazel was like, "stfu, bitch," because it was basically the one example we got of an ill person not being "in the club," if you know what I mean. But then again part of Hazel's reaction to her is that this girl is in remission, this girl will be okay. So I'm not really sure what to do with that.
/incoherence.