The #1 New York Times bestseller, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green has seen much success and admiration since its release on January 10th, 2012.
This 313 paged, 25 chaptered novel contains love, humor, intelligence, and sadness all wrapped into one incredible story. This heart-breaking story is guaranteed to make you cry, laugh, and smile, and overall– it is an extreme pleasure to read.
The story follows Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old cancer patient. Hazel is a homebody who reads classic literature, is an intelligent human being, and is greatly fond of horrible reality TV shows. She is horrifically concerned with how people will respond to her death, especially her parents.
In the beginning of the novel, she has no real particular interest in attending a cancer support group, though her mother pushes her to go. Little did she know, attending that one particular day of support group would change her life. There, she meets Augustus Waters for the first time. Gus has been in remission for about a year and a half at the time the novel begins and immediately wins over Hazel with his pretentious metaphors and charm.
When Augustus Waters begins to show interest in her, she finds herself dwelling on the thought of hurting him and hurting everyone she loves in the end.
She ultimately tells herself that she cannot be with Gus; she wants to minimize the impact she has. She, unlike lots of other people, does not want to be popular or famous, and instead chooses to leave less of a footprint in almost every aspect of her life, including becoming a vegetarian.
However, Gus and Hazel do find themselves bonding over books, especially An Imperial Affliction by Peter van Houten. The main draw they both had to An Imperial Affliction was the fact that it’s about a teenage girl with leukemia. Over the years, Hazel has written to the author countless times and has never received a response. Then, Gus, without her knowledge, writes van Houten a letter and emails it to his assistant. It lands them in Amsterdam with the opportunity to meet van Houten.
Though Peter van Houten turned out to be a much different person than they had originally thought, they didn’t let that get in the way of their trip. When tragedy strikes towards the end of the novel, you see Hazel’s fear of hurting the people she loves starts to fade away and even in sickness, she comes upon several epiphanies.
The Fault in Our Stars has recently been made into a movie adaptation and will be released into theaters on June 6th, 2014. Green was present during most of the film and got to experience his characters come to life. The movie stars Ansel Elgort plays Augustus Waters and Shailene Woodley plays Hazel Grace Lancaster.
Green answered a question on if he thought the movie and book were similar or not and said, “I don’t think they can be the same, and I don’t think they should be because in a movie, you’re trying to tell a visual story instead of a textual story….I think that the movie script was a very faithful adaptation, one of the most faithful I’ve ever read.”
Before beginning to read this novel, you may flip open the book and see the dedication page, which reads, “To Esther Earl.” Now, if you’ve never watched any of Green’s videos, you might not have ever heard of her. She was a 16-year-old cancer patient who died in 2010. Green met her at a Harry Potter convention and they became friends. Green has stated in a previous video that he wouldn’t have been able to write this novel without having known her. Although, in a Q&A, Green stated, “…I really don’t want to seem to be appropriating Esther’s story, which belongs to her and to her family and not to me. Hazel is a fictional character, and she is in many important ways very different from the person Esther was.”
Green also makes YouTube videos with his brother, Hank Green. The name of their channel is vlogbrothersand they’ve been making videos since 2007. They’ve seen much success in that channel as well as several other YouTube related projects. The people involved in the community based around their channel are called “Nerdfighters.”
For The Fault in Our Stars, he won the Children’s Choice Book Award for Teen Book of the Year in 2013. The Fault in Our Stars was also the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, #1 Indiebound bestseller, and also the #9 The Bookseller bestseller.
Green has also recently been named one of the hundred most influential people for Time magazine in 2014. He’s written five books other than The Fault in Our Stars and has won multiple awards for them as well.
Many people have been able to relate to this beautifully heart breaking story, and it’s evident by viewing the responses on his website. Responses to Green about each of his novels flood in every hour, most of which contain thanks for writing such “amazing” novels and excitement over the movie.
