[book_talk] book review - John Green

From: "Bonnie L. Sherrell" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "blslarner@xxxxxxxxxx" for DMARC)
To: "Blind Chit Chat" <Blind-Chit-Chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Books for the Blind" <Books4theblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Blind Book Lovers Cafe" <bblc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Book Talk" <book_talk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 22:07:49 -0800

_The Fault in Our Stars_
by John Green

Hazel Grace Lancaster disagreed with the books that indicated that
depression was a side effect of cancer.  She knew the truth--that
instead it is a side effect of dying.  She knew well enough that she
was dying, after all--the only question was how long it might be before
that day came.  For now the experimental medication she received was
keeping the tumors in her lungs, tumors that had started out in her
thyroid, suppressed.  However, the medication did nothing for the
fluids that tended to build up in her lungs, and she was frustrated
that for all she ought to be considered pretty darn healthy for a kid
with cancer, still she had lungs that sucked at acting like lungs.

And then she met Augustus Waters, who had lost a leg to osteosarcoma
but who was doing darned well.  He'd lost interest in playing
basketball since his bout with cancer, and what he wanted more than
anything else was to make an indelible mark on the world.  They met at
a support group meeting held in a church basement, and Hazel was quick
to point out to him that in the end all attempts to leave a legacy was
doomed to failure, what with the likelihood that in time the world
itself would end up being swallowed up by the sun when it finally goes
supernova, even though that event is still most likely a few million
years in the future.

Their friendship bloomed as both became obsessed in learning what
happened after the main character in Hazel's favorite book, "The
Imperial Affliction," died.  Was Sysiphus the hamster doomed to be fed
to a cat, and did Anna's mother marry the Dutch Tulip Man?  The author,
however, who'd retired to Amsterdam after his book was published,
refused to answer fan mail or to answer those questions for anyone. 
But Augustus Waters seemed far more capable of wringing information
from the Internet, and when he connected with the author's writing
assistant it seemed the two of them were likely to find out what other
readers could not.

Peter van Houten, however, was maddeningly reluctant to answer anyone's
questions, responding as often as not with philosophical hypothetical
questions and paradoxes and demanding another scotch and water--without
the water, however.  And it appears that cancer was not through with
Augustus Waters.

I was introduced to the story last summer when friends and I went to
the drive-in movie and it was playing along with Malaficent.  I just
finished the book last week.  I am pleased to report that the book and
the movie agreed in almost all important details, although the ending
to the movie, in which we see Hazel Grace going outside to lie down on
the lawn, smiling up as she watches the stars overhead is not hinted at
in the book, nor the detail that when she does this she is not wearing
her cannula.  

At first we were almost ready to leave the theater, although we are
very glad we gave it a chance.  The book is realistic, a gentle love
story between two delightful young people who did their best to live as
fully as they could in defiance of their conditions.  Definitely a
book--and a movie--to be savored.  I read it in print--realized only
when I began the book last Tuesday that I'd managed to get hold of the
large-print edition; but it is available also as an e-book and through
Audible. And I love it when the book and the movie follow one another
so well!
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large

"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise 
cannot see all ends." LOTR

"Don't go where I can't follow."

[book_talk] book review - John Green

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