Hazel Grace Lancaster has been graced by a miracle medicine, and has been given some time to live. But nobody knows how long the miracle will last, and because of that, Hazel lives a life restrained by the maybes of her disease. How could she love anyone when she could die any minute? So Hazel keeps three best friends: Her often-weeping father, a mother she's scared to hurt, and Peter Van Houten, an author she's never met. Until Augustus arrives.
Augustus and Hazel meet at a eerily depressing support group, and well, fall in love. Augustus has beaten osteosarcoma (at the cost of one of his legs) and despite his atrocious driving, quickly becomes the love of Hazel's life. Hazel and Augustus exchange books after watching V For Vendetta together: Hazel gets the novelization of a fictional video game (along with his phone number), and Augustus receives An Imperial Affliction. Augustus reads the book, and is horror-stricken to discover that An Imperial Affliction ends mid-sentence. Hazel and Augustus both want to know what happens to the main character and the cast of characters, (particularly the main character's mother) so they send emails and letters to the author. The author, Peter Van Houten, is a recluse who moved to Amsterdam many years ago, without a word about a possible sequel or explaination. Hazel and Augustus want to know what happened, and well, that takes them places. In the meanwhile, they both discover and struggle with what it means to be alive and the meaning of legacy and the clash between greatness and goodness amist terrible suffering and happiness.
I really can't say anymore without infracting spoilers, but it's a story about the legacy we live behind after we die and the metaphorical implications of video game deaths and lovelovelove. It's a story that makes you laugh and cry at the same time (as I did, quite literally when I first read it)
I decided to reread it for the first time in six months yesterday, almost to the exact the year anniversary since I read it. I was not dissipointed. The beginning goes a little slow at first, but then it picks up and oh boy does it take you places.
There are a few books in this world that completely transform, both immediately and over the time, the way you write, read, and think. This is one of them. (Fun Fact: As I was rereading it, I noticed how many of my own writing tropes originated from that book. Thanks John) And this book is just so damn quotable. Not just because of the romanticism of some of them, but the sheer freaking TRUTH. Ughhh how many Young Adults books does one read that have lines like "While the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world," and "I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once." It's just so great. And so true.
I guess that's what I love about this book. It's true in all the honest, beautiful, tragic ways a book should be, and how life is. My copy of TFIOS is filled with annotations as I draw connections between dialogue and intentions and implications of the diction and syntax used, how it resembles earlier things. When I was googling a pic for this article, I found this little quote from a Time magazine article (The book won the Best Fiction Award at Time magazine, rightly deserved.) "While the prevailing trend in young-adult novels is toward supernatural romance and dystopian science fiction, Green dispenses with magic and our dismal totalitarian future. He doesn't need them. For his purposes, love is magic, and the present is dystopian enough." And it really is. The suffering of the characters is not abstract, nor is there joy and happiness. This is not a story about Mary Sues thrust in a magical world. The characters are well-drawn, complex desperate humans with hamartias just as scarring as people in real life, and just as brave and hilarious as people in real life.
I've rambled enough about this book. But boy, do I love it. John Green, you did it again. Thanks.
