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A review by apireading
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
5.0
Wow.
I don't know where to begin because it's all very fresh in my mind and I just closed the book. The Fault In Our Stars has made me feel so many things I haven't felt in a book in ages. And it affects me as a reader, as a person, as someone who likes to write. In every way, John Green has proven to be one of the greatest writer of the YA genre.
Hazel is a complex but truly comprehensible character. She is a very weird compilation of a fighter, a pessimist and a realist. I always think to be this kind of weird girl and I think you don't have to be sick to rely on this kind of personality : you just have to hate something in your body, or have a hate-love relationship with it to understand why this girl is so complex. She is not a hero, or has an extraordinary way to compensate her illness by being super smart, or super dedicated to help the others, etc. She is just an average normal girl who never asked to live in her condition. And like every girl, her gloomy and morose personality explodes when she fell in love with a boy.
And this boy … He is not like every other boy. Augustus is the most beautiful male character I ever read (and the tears comes out of my eyes while I'm writing about him). And the tragedy is that Gus is perfect (handsome, cultivated, funny, corky) but his perfection could seem wasted because of his sickness. It is what you think at the beginning. But he is not. He's still perfect, beside and with his sickness. His soul is pure even if he has defaults, even if you can understand why Hazel is so reluctant and angry at him by his selfish way to hardly want to be reminded. Who can blame Augustus ? No one wants to be forget. But he was aware in his last letter to Van Houten that he will not be forgot through Hazel, through his love for her and vice versa.
I love how the adults are depicted, every one of them as his way to deal with the the sickness, but everyone has the same way to deal with the death of a child : it is the great tragedy for a parent. It reminds me of a quote by french writer Jean Genet that I could translate "To live it is to survive from a dead child". The parents are only presented by their role of parent and when Hazel's mom asked to her husband if she will continue to be a mom even when Hazel will die, it broke my heart.
It's not by luck if TFIOS touched so many people around the world, why so many people has cried and laughed while reading it, but because it's so much more than a love story about two sick adolescents. It is a lesson, a slap in your face to make you realize that you have accomplished, what you are, what you want to share with the people you love, and maybe how lucky you are to be alive now. So I will just finish this non-sense review by saying … thank you John Green, thank you so much.
I don't know where to begin because it's all very fresh in my mind and I just closed the book. The Fault In Our Stars has made me feel so many things I haven't felt in a book in ages. And it affects me as a reader, as a person, as someone who likes to write. In every way, John Green has proven to be one of the greatest writer of the YA genre.
Hazel is a complex but truly comprehensible character. She is a very weird compilation of a fighter, a pessimist and a realist. I always think to be this kind of weird girl and I think you don't have to be sick to rely on this kind of personality : you just have to hate something in your body, or have a hate-love relationship with it to understand why this girl is so complex. She is not a hero, or has an extraordinary way to compensate her illness by being super smart, or super dedicated to help the others, etc. She is just an average normal girl who never asked to live in her condition. And like every girl, her gloomy and morose personality explodes when she fell in love with a boy.
And this boy … He is not like every other boy. Augustus is the most beautiful male character I ever read (and the tears comes out of my eyes while I'm writing about him). And the tragedy is that Gus is perfect (handsome, cultivated, funny, corky) but his perfection could seem wasted because of his sickness. It is what you think at the beginning. But he is not. He's still perfect, beside and with his sickness. His soul is pure even if he has defaults, even if you can understand why Hazel is so reluctant and angry at him by his selfish way to hardly want to be reminded. Who can blame Augustus ? No one wants to be forget. But he was aware in his last letter to Van Houten that he will not be forgot through Hazel, through his love for her and vice versa.
I love how the adults are depicted, every one of them as his way to deal with the the sickness, but everyone has the same way to deal with the death of a child : it is the great tragedy for a parent. It reminds me of a quote by french writer Jean Genet that I could translate "To live it is to survive from a dead child". The parents are only presented by their role of parent and when Hazel's mom asked to her husband if she will continue to be a mom even when Hazel will die, it broke my heart.
It's not by luck if TFIOS touched so many people around the world, why so many people has cried and laughed while reading it, but because it's so much more than a love story about two sick adolescents. It is a lesson, a slap in your face to make you realize that you have accomplished, what you are, what you want to share with the people you love, and maybe how lucky you are to be alive now. So I will just finish this non-sense review by saying … thank you John Green, thank you so much.