By Michelle Palmer
John Green’s bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars is a story of resilience and determination. It’s a love story, not just between a boy and a girl, but between parents and children. It’s a testimony to the power that one book can have in someone’s life. It’s also a book about cancer.
In Green’s newest novel, we meet Hazel, a 16-year-old with a rare form of childhood cancer. It’s clear from the beginning of the book that Hazel’s cancer is terminal—experimental treatment has already given her many more years than the doctors expected. Constantly short of breath, Hazel no longer attends school but is able to meet with a support group for teens.
It is there, in the basement of a local church, where Hazel meets Augustus, a 17-year-old cancer survivor himself. Despite Hazel’s terminal diagnosis, love blooms between these two smart, funny teens. It would have been easy for Green’s novel to continue on the path of teen romance. But Fault is bigger than that. It’s about the meaning of life, about making the most of the time we have on this earth and about the importance of moving on when someone we love passes away.
The Fault in Our Stars shows clearly what it is like to be a person suffering from cancer, but it also shows how to live. As Hazel and Gus’s romance deepens, the two become close in a way that only a life-threatening illness could provide. For years, Hazel has been obsessed with a book entitled An Imperial Affliction, one of those “read again and again until you know it by heart” kinds of books. Through Gus, Hazel is offered the opportunity of a lifetime—she gets to meet the author and ask every question she ever had about the book’s ending. To reveal any more would be to spoil a wonderfully poignant, laugh-out-loud funny and marvelously written story.
When the One Book committee discussed book choices for this year, The Fault in Our Stars was on the “short list.” But it’s hard to pick a book about cancer. As Hazel says, “cancer books suck.” At its heart, however, Fault is not just a book about cancer—it’s a life-affirming novel that will make you laugh, and cry, and look at terminal illness in a whole new light.
