The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
Despite a tumor shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.Let's get the elephant out of room right off the bat, okay? How many of you were shocked, shocked, that the book did not end in the midst of a sentence? I know, right? I had the experience of reading this entire book in increments while in the bathroom, so, as you can imagine, it took me awhile (I was going alright, until it got warm enough that I had to open my bathroom window for the breeze to get in, and then I stopped turning on the light when I was in there because I didn't want to neighbors to see in, and it's pretty hard to read in the dark). So anyway, in the months between when I first read that section about how An Imperial Affliction ends, and the end of this book, I totally built it up in my head that this one was going to go out in the middle of a sentence, and I have to tell you, I was super excited about it. Like, at first, yes, I hate open-ended books (see below), but you know, when you have a few weeks to prepare yourself for it, you kind of get a little disappointed when it turns out to end on a period.
I told you about the bathroom thing in part because of that, but also to explain why I didn't cry at the end, they way you're supposed to. It's like that scene in The Princess Bride (and how sad is it that I had to look up whether it was "a" princess bride or "the" princess bride, like, yeah, there's a bunch of 'em roaming around, can't throw a stone without hitting one) where Westley dies, and our narrator has to build a wall around his heart before he can go on with the story, except with this book, the ratio of heartbreaking stuff to time to prepare for it was super one-sided, and I definitely had time to clear each hurdle before the next one popped up, although I gotta say, my grinch-like heart did twinge a few times.
It is a sad book, I mean, it's at the crossroads of, books where kids die, and books where your true love goes away, plus like, books where your hero turns out to be a humbug, times cancer, so you know it's not going to end well. But, obviously (or at least, obviously to me), it's about the fact that there's more underneath the surface, and even though they might end up being that kid who died of cancer, that's not who they were. The other thing that stuck out to me was their wish to leave a mark, to make a difference in the world. It's a theme that's somewhat echoed in An Abundance of Katherines, but it makes more sense here, where they know that there's only a little time to make that mark. I don't remember thinking about that at all when I was growing up, but it is something that's on my mind more and more; this idea that you want people to remember you, you want to have done something, accomplished something, lived life like an adventure and not just a routine. And it's true, though, that you could do none of those things, and still leave grief behind you when you go. You don't have to have created something wondrous to be an important person.
This whole book is basically that line in the poem, "Tis better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all." (Tennyson, bitches). It's also that movie French Kiss, which isn't quite as literary as Tennyson, but is vastly more enjoyable, where Meg Ryan goes on about how you can't protect yourself from getting hurt - "There's no home safe enough, there's no country nice enough, there's no relationship secure enough. You're just setting yourself up for an even bigger fall, and having an incredibly boring time in the process." You are going to be hurt, but as Augustus Waters says, you can choose who hurts you.
Yay, let's move on to characters: they were pretty cool, yo. I appreciated the wit in this story, the facility each person had with language. It's not realistic, really, but it's similar to the way scripted television approximates life (and here I'm thinking more Buffy than, say Pretty Little Liars), an approximation, but a funny one, one that you wish you could be half as cool as. It was interesting to me (as a person who does not have cancer, nor knows any one younger than sixty who has had cancer) to see that Hazel was about as irritated by the schmaltzy stuff as I would have been. Possibly even more so, since I would have tried at least to have some reverence for people who are in imminent danger of dying. I guess though, that's the thing - once you're the one doing the dying, you don't feel the same urge to give them leeway in being ridiculous.
One thing I did not appreciate was the return of Peter Van Houten. I really enjoyed the way he was a complete asshole to these kids, but I thought the fact that he had secret pain and that's why he was a big old jerk was just too convenient. Or, well, not convenient, but coincidental, I guess. But not that either, more like a weird mix of those plus . . . . okay, I have to pause this, because a fly is swimming in my cherry water/vanilla ice cream float remnants. Well, not so much swimming as "drowning" I think, since it keeps sitting up and then just sort of flailing. I have to go take care of this. The only thing worse than a hardened residue of ice cream at the bottom of a glass is a hardened residue of ice cream and a dead fly at the bottom of a glass.
I don't want to sound cruel or anything, but that fly did not take long at all to die.
Moving on, I did like the book, but even though it discussed a lot of meaningful things, I still felt like it only brushed the surface, maybe even because it discussed these things. Sometimes, it's felt more deeply when there are no words to use, and that did happen here as well, and I understand that part of the point was that they had to use humor and words to cover up the fear and pain, or go mad, but sometimes you just want a good breakdown. I guess my problem was the same from the very beginning: I wanted a sudden shock of half-written sentence, not the slow realization of a goodbye note.
But it's still very good, and funny, and not at all forgettable or hard to keep track of from one page to the next, which is essential in a book that you're reading in two minute increments, I've come to find.
An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and on over-weight Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and may finally win him the girl.
The weirdest thing about this book, is the way that all of Hassan's dialogue, I heard with Aasif Mandvi's accent, which is terrible, since I know that Mr. Mandvi has to deal with "brown-typing" (I put that in quotes, not trying to imply that I don't believe it happens, just that I'm not sure whether that's a real word or one I made up, but even if it is made up, I think it gets the idea across pretty well). Although now that I think about it, that's not a weird thing about the book so much as it is a weird thing about me.
I found myself vaguely dissatisfied with this book. Unlike The Fault in Our Stars, I read it all in one day, today, in fact, so it was a much brisker experience.
[PSA: It has now reached the late afternoon/early evening portion of the day, in which everything just sort of heats up like an oven, especially the room where the computer is, and literally every pore on my body is emitting sweat, so what I'm basically trying to say is that if there are typos in this section, fuck you, man, I'm not staying up here any longer than I have to. Forewarned is forearmed.]
The thing about these books that I'm reading, apparently, is that I want them to be one thing, and then they turn out to be something else, and then I get pissy about it. For example, I wanted this book to be a hilarious road trip book about Colin and Hassan, where they travel the country and meet weird people and see weird places and then wind up back in Chicago and go to college. Instead, they have a one-chapter road trip, and wind up staying in Tennessee for the rest of the book, which is okay, I guess. I dunno, maybe if Colin hadn't ended up with Lindsey? I just want him to realize that he doesn't have to be in a relationship, with a Katherine or without. I'm all, power to Hassan, because he seems like someone who isn't hung up on himself. Unlike Colin, who is worried he's already peaked at age thirteen. I just didn't finish the book with any faith that this relationship is going to be any better than his previous ones, besides the fact that she's named Lindsey, not Katherine. Also, he's apparently going to school at Northwestern, and she's going to go be a paramedic, so they're basically going to be breaking up as soon as he goes back home anyway, right?
I guess I'm just confused. What was the end result of the book? Besides the realization that you cannot actually chart a relationship (which, if Colin honestly did need to come to that realization, then that is just plain sad) I guess the point is that even if Colin wasn't the dumpee in all those relationships, the important thing was that he had believed he was. I could definitely have done without that sub-plot. It just baffled me that Lindsey found Colin in any way attractive, although we are talking about the same girl who wanted to date a guy who gave her dog food as a valentine.
Even though I was bored by all the Lindsey/Colin scenes, I did enjoy most everything else, especially the pig-hunt. Every one loves a feral pig, amirite? This one had the same snappy dialogue as The Fault in Our Stars, but the central character and relationship was not as entertaining, like I said. Plus, you got me all upset because it just ends while they're all in Tennessee still, like, is Hollis going to pay them $1,000 a week now that they know the factory is going under (and why would she offer such an exorbitant rate anyway?), and is The Other Colin still intent on beating them up, and what the the relationship theorem say about Hassan and Katrina's short-lived fling?
I do think this would be a visually entertaining book (as The Fault in Our Stars could be; they're both very cinematic) so if, as the notes say, it is going to be made into a movie, I think it could be delightful. It's not a bad way to spend a hot Sunday afternoon, that's for sure.
