CANCER
BOOK + JOHN GREEN = NOT A CANCER BOOK
(Also
known as The Fault in Our Stars)
“My name is Hazel.
“Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my
life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a
sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus
knows. I will not tell you our love story because – like all real love stories
– it will die with us, as it should…
“I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about
math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers
between 0 and 1. There’s 0.1 and 0.12 and 0.112 and an infinite collection of others.
Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2 or
between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A
writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I
resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to
get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But Gus, my
love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t
trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I’m
grateful.”
Narrated
through the eyes of sixteen year old Hazel Lancaster who is suffering from
terminal lung cancer and has to carry an oxygen tank everywhere because ‘my
lungs suck at being lungs’, The Fault in Our Stars is a refreshing slap
in the face.
Apart
from being sick, Hazel is just like anyone of us. She loves books and has a
one-sided friendship with her favourite author, Peter Van Houten.
(Don’t
we all?)
This
book is about a girl who has cancer but it’s not a cancer book because as Hazel
would say, ‘cancer books suck.’
Hazel meets Augustus Waters, who is recovering from
osteosarcoma at a Cancer Kid Support Group.
Two kids with two lives, bleeding into one as their lives
fall apart. The only silver lining in their lives is falling in love. Their
story isn’t rainbows and sunshine. It isn’t straight-forward but it’s beautiful
that way.
According
to the conventions of the genre, the story should have been about two characters
who fight the cancer that ravages their bodies until their very last breaths.
The characters will keep their senses of humours and will not at any point
waiver in their courage, their spirits will soar like an indomitable eagle
until the world itself cannot contain their joyous soul. Or they will
miraculously survive even if realistically there was little to no chance of
them doing so.
The
sad truth is, they don’t. In the end, they are pitiful people who desperately
do not want
to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept
them alive, but not alive enough.
This
story is about love and making choices and just… life. It’s about life with all of its ups and downs and death with
more downs than ups.
There
are books out there that touch the bottom of your heart, wrench your eyes open
and force you to see.
There
are some books that will fill you to tears that you will feel so depressed days
after reading the book and others where you’ll laugh so hard you find yourself
rolling on the floor in hysterics.
There
are others that make you so angry at how unfair everything is and then there
are books like this.
Whilst
reading this book, you want to laugh and cry and scream all at once. But you
can’t.
So
you read.
Books
like this have the power to make or break its readers.
A
book character can sweep its readers off their feet in love, can break one’s
heart with pain and can make you roll on the floor laughing.
I’d
need a dictionary to describe this book and even then I’d probably never have
enough words to fully explain why this book just… works. But I’ll try anyway.
This
book is: heart-breaking, devastating, depressing, moving, striking,
overwhelming, breathtaking, harrowing, jaw-dropping and so many other –ing
words I can’t think of.
“There are books which you can’t tell people about, books
so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a
betrayal.”
This
is one of those books.
This
is probably one of the best and most realistic love stories I have ever
and will ever read in my entire life.
This book has taken me onto a
rollercoaster of emotions and to be honest, I never wanted to get off because I
just knew the ending would suck and
leave me totally depressed.
“The
world is not a wish-granting factory.”
And even if it was, you would still need to be positive and
do what Augustus and Hazel did by just enjoying what we do have of life instead
of concentrating on those little grains of sand that keep falling between our
fingers until it’s all gone.
This story shows highlights the fragility of life and the
importance of treasuring the things you do
have in life instead of worrying over the things you don’t.
“The
fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
The New Kid On The Block,
-
Linda.
