Book Review| The Fault In Our Stars

Author Name: John Green

Book Description:

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.

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

My Review:

“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.” - The Fault in Our Stars

This is how I feel about this book.

When I first picked up this book, I was totally aware of the fact that, The fault in our stars is going to be a sad book. I expected it to make me cry and make ne feel empty inside as I knew someone is going to die here.

What surprizes me is that, it didn't make me feel empty. Okay, no doubt it made me cry. A lot. But it gives me the hope that true love does exist and there is possibility of life in every situation. It was a difficult journey for me, reading this one with blurry eyes but when I finished reading it, I just couldn't stop talking about it with everyone. I was happy. I believed in love even more than I already did.

As a literature student, when I held the book, I was immediately reminded of the Shakespearean play Julius Caesar, where Cassius says to Brutus, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

It is about a 16 years old girl Hazel who had thyroid cancer. She meets Augustus cancer support group. She was very much impressed by his insight about life and death and they start meeting each other.

They recommend each other their favourite books. Augustus gives Hazel, The Price of Dawn, and Hazel, An Imperial Affliction.

Augustus goes on to contact the author of An Imperial Affliction as he wanted to know the ending of the story. They decide to meet. And during the journey to meet the author, Augustus and Hazel fall in love with each other. It was unfortunate that the author actually was very mean and a drunkard. They had their first sexual intercourse during the journey and return back. Augustus falls sick with cancer again and dies which leaves Hazel heartbroken and shatterred. She finds out that Augustus had been writing a sequal to the unfinished book where he says that we are the one to choose who can hurt us. And that he is happy with his choice and hope she is happy with her choice as well. The novels ends here with Hazel happily stating that she is happy with her choice.

But it is much more than a love story also.

“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.” -The Fault in Our Stars

Ratings: 5/5