The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

[lightreads]

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So I'm going to one-sentence this book, and you guys are going to make The Face, which I also made, for the record, and then we're going to talk about the ways it's great.

This is a book about Hazel, who Is sixteen and terminally ill, and the boy she meets at support group.

*Pause for The Face*

So it's a book about being young and being sick. And also being in love, but honestly that part was by far the least interesting to me, so we're basically skipping it. Because for me, this was a book about being young and being sick, and it was great. Around the time three disabled characters shared a scene together with no able-bodied characters present, and they sat around and discussed their love lives? Yeah. I was like holy shit, right, because I have read a lot of books, okay, and a lot of books about disabled people, and I have never seen such a thing. Ever.

I'm actually selling this book short by talking about it like that. This book gets at the experience of chronic pain in such casual, tangential, brilliant ways. And it gets the ebb and flow of illness, the way you just have to ride with it. And it is a bold-faced, no fucking around, passionate argument to the world that people with disabilities and people who are dying are still human beings. Which is absolutely something that we need to argue about, because for almost everyone I have ever met, illness or disability puts you in a box marked other in ways conscious but mostly subliminal. This book gets most of those ways – the infantilization, the way people eulogize before and after death, so much of it. And to see a book – and a very popular book – arguing the other way to teenagers, of all people, with conviction and clarity (and a startling lack of treakly bullshit) was pretty amazing for me.

I was far less impressed with this book as a story. One of the other things it's doing is cutting at this notion of disability and illness as metaphor. I don't know how many times I have shouted at a book or the TV about this. Disability isn't a metaphor for moral decay, or the dangers of industrialized society, or, I don't know, the fatal flaw of the human race. And it's not a learning experience, and it's not a gateway to wisdom. It's just disability. It's a thing that happens. It's chance. And as one character puts it in this book, "it's bullshit." I'd modify that to chance bullshit, but yeah, pretty much.

So the book is arguing about how disability isn't a narrative device. It spends a lot of time making fun of 'cancer books' where illness is the gateway to one heartwarming epiphany after another. But then this book turns around and delivers a plot designed to lead the protagonist through a series of epiphanies concerning what she wants out of the rest of her life, how she can make peace with her [parents and the hurt she will leave behind, etc. And it just . . . I didn't need that. And I didn't want it. This book could have been a series of days, it could still even have been a love story, and as long as it kept on about being young and being sick, I would have thought it was great. Everything else felt contrived to me, and particularly in light of the explicit arguments of the book.

Also, is John Green physically capable of writing a book in which no one ever takes a transformative road trip? Because honestly….

So yeah. Basically it's great on the page-by-page level. And I am so so glad this book was written and that it's doing so well. (Though the day a disabled author gets to write a book about disabled characters to international acclaim will be the day I'm truly impressed). And yes, it will make a lot of you cry. And I really did love it, even though his characters are beginning to sound pathologically witty to me after only two books. But I actually would have enjoyed this book more if it had less 'book' in it.




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Comments

[jadelennox]

*flaps hands* I just finished listening to this one yesterday and had this whole fantasy of making you read it and making a bunch of other people with other disabilities and serious illnesses and chronic conditions read it, so we could talk about the things he gets so right and the things he gets so wrong and then talk about it as a book without any disability/illness issues at all. And then you read it.

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.

Actually that might be what happens with the metaphor issue you bring up. The first half of the book stresses explicitly the whole idea of life as metaphor. Metaphorical cigarettes, and all. And then the last third of the book is concentrated tearjerking, personalities distilled through pain, etc., and the 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.)

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.

(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.")

[lightreads]

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.

/incoherence.

[jadelennox]

Oh man the Hazel's-so-brave girl. I hated her too and yet... there was so much judgement from Hazel of people who were getting better, like a kid with cancer who was going to live was the worst person in the world for still wanting support. It seemed pretty clear sometimes that living didn't taint you only if you paid for it: your eyes, your leg, your balls. There's even one point where the make-a-wish types give Gus a wish anyway in exchange for his leg (though I don't recall the timeline well; that might have been a lie and he might have known he was dying at that point).

And, yeah. I get it. I get it from both sides, I get the difference between dying and living, between people with less and more pain than you, and how you can end up with resentment. But Hazel's judgement -- which rang totally true to me, don't get me wrong -- went in the bucket with some of the other comments about pain. Like that nurse who praised Hazel because she under-reported her pain on that goddamned pain scale, my god I hated that nurse so hard. And again, totally real as a character, but it was part and parcel of the whole Hallowed Suffering element that built up after a while.

[lightreads]

(though I don't recall the timeline well; that might have been a lie and he might have known he was dying at that point).

That is what I assumed. It was one of the first clues that something was up with him, and it snagged my attention. But yes, your underlying point about buying things with pain. I feel like this was something Green sorta had thought about, but only in a very surfacey way. See the ironic jokes about "cancer perks" -- the special things you get for being sick. He sort of engaged there, but not very deeply or very well.

[ecaterin]

DAKOTA [upon me reading this review to him]: It's a book that's good about people with cancer, but a book that's not so good about...[pause for hand flapping]...people.

By which he means, 'would have been better if it had less 'book' in it.'

He was SO relieved to hear this review, because his friends are all raving about it and he came away from it going....you guys....how do I explain why it's good....but it's not that kind of good.....

Getting to hear your *sense* of a thing converted into crisply clear discussion by a clear thinker and writer - is how kids ever turn into clear thinkers and writers.

Clearly I should read more of your reviews to him, cause there's some crossover in reading in our household :D

[lightreads]

See, what's funny to me about this is the notion that my reviews are clear writing. If they are, it's by sheer happy accident, since 3 times out of 5 I just throw the first thought at the wall and call it good. The other 2 out of 5 I might have a throughline, and if I'm real serious I miiiight do some editing. I do it that way to keep it fun and not an obligation. But glad there's some clarity for someone!

[ecaterin]

Well, clarity in this context is a function of years and years of crafting tight writing and tight arguments and tight thinking. Even when just tossing stuff out, all of that internalized structure is evident. You're clear even when you're tacking like a sailboat on a becalmed day :D

Compared to the way a 15yo who hasn't written much thinks, it's a HUGE difference :D

[lightreads]

I've actually wanted to write a post for years about how reviewing for -- yikes, for six years has made me a much better writer. By way of being a better reader, mostly, and working at the trick of getting the feel of something right in about 500 words. (This is something they tell you in writing school -- to be a better writer, read. I would say 'to be a better writer, read, then write about it. For years. And then more years. Sucker!') But somewhat hilariously, I can't get it to come out when I try to write it. Okay then, brain.

[avendya]

Thank you for this review -- I hadn't realized that The Fault in Our Stars dealt with living with illness. I'm not sure I'm in a mental state where I can read it at the moment, but I probably will eventually.