The Fault in our stars: review

  The fault in our stars is a sentimental and an emotional love story based novel written by John Green which has a lot of turns and twists. It’s a chapter based novel, consisting 26 chapters the novel is telling a story of a 16 years old girl called Hazel who is suffering from thyroid cancer. The whole story deals with different sentimental and fun situations although it’s not a funny book but still has some funny things. There are some dark and deep aspects that are hidden in the story.

The title ‘The Fault in our stars’ itself is a great lesson given by the author which keeps on changing and the reader keeps interpreting those lessons and messages. There are so many themes like love, fate, stars, hope, life, death and most importantly living. John Green dedicated this book to his friend Esther who died of cancer. This is a story of teenagers who are trying to live in this dark world and try to stay positive in every aspect. Story starts when Hazel meets Augustus in a Cancer support group and slowly they fall in love with each other. Their journey starts by finding an unanswered question of novel name ‘imperial affliction’ the book ends in the middle in a sentence, the books also plays important role is Hazel and Gus life as it emphasis the inability of humans to escape from suffering as the meaning of book itself is suffering sent by higher power, the protagonist of that novel Anna has died of cancer which is why Hazel was obsessed with it. To find the answer of their questions Augustus and Hazel set off on a journey but the author of the book didn’t answer and they came back empty handed. The final twist comes when Augustus' bone cancer gets worse and he dies later Hazel attends his funeral and meets Peter the author of that book who gave her a letter written by Augustus to her. That letter gave answer to all the unanswered questions she had, the letter's last word reads; “you don’t get to choose, you get hurt in this world, old man,

But you do have some. Same, who hurts you. I like my choice, I hope she likes her too.”

Later in 2014, Josh Boone made a movie but it was somehow different from the Book, like the ending and Hazel’s meeting with Augustus and Peter for the last time. I think the characters in this book are so realistic, the dialogues were very natural and the writing style of John was different this time, it mixes the literary and poetry language although there was a nice balance.

The lesson the story gives is life is too short we should not waste it to understand it because by the time we understand it life will end. Hazel does understand the value of life after meeting Augustus. Augustus in her life was a miracle for her. Miracle happens for those who see and believe. The story gives the lesson that one who left will suffer till death but it’s up to us to whom we want to suffer from. Although the novel answers some of the question but left the readers with some queries that what if the story was told from the Augustus point of view, why the ending was same as the fictional novel ‘Imperial Affliction’ and what is the relation between John and fictional author Peter?