The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green (Dutton 2012)
Pages: 313
Price: $10-$18

HE SAID: John Green, half of the Internet-famous “Vlogbrothers” and Printz Award-winning author, is no stranger to young adult fiction. Some argue he acutely understands the teenagers he draws from as if he were one of them. He fuses this insight with humor, despair, pop culture, mystery and calculatedly one-of-a-kind characters in his latest, The Fault in Our Stars, as well as in past triumphs Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns.

The Fault in Our Stars, set in Indianapolis and perhaps Green’s most ambitious project yet, delves into the life of Hazel Grace Lancaster, which has been skewered by a unique type of thyroid cancer, treatable though altogether incurable. But as she puts it simply in Chapter 1, the big problem is that her lungs “sucked at being lungs.”

Despite the orange-bottled wonder that has bought her some time, Hazel has always been terminal and nothing but. This bump in the road puts her relationship with Augustus Waters, the metaphor-obsessed and consciously attractive amputee she meets at a cancer support group, up in the air.
For every attribute the couple shares, there is a witty opposite. Augustus’ determination to leave a mark on the world is mirrored by that of Hazel’s to live a normal life, to leave no wounds — specifically on Augustus, whom she’s convinced she cannot love without hurting.

I’d trust only John Green to tackle a subject of this substance. The style he writes with in this novel and those past is commendable for its grace, intelligence and empathetic grasp that would make John Hughes proud. Though the pace slows in some parts, Green crafts each of his characters and the parts they play with tear-provoking prose you can find only in his work. -MAX ASAYESH-BROWN, St. Petersburg High

SHE SAID: Due in part to his large YouTube following, John Green’s newest novel became No. 1 on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble best-seller lists more than six months before its publication date. Now, The Fault in Our Stars sits comfortably at No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list of children’s chapter books. Sixteen-year-old Hazel suffers from terminal cancer, kept at bay by a “miracle drug.” She rails against the heroic connotations and societal expectations of her condition. Though she protests, her mom forces her to attend a support group she hates. There she meets young cancer survivor Augustus Waters. Together they bond over a mutual love of the book An Imperial Affliction and a mutual cynicism of other people. By telling their love story, Green seeks to show that a short life does not need to be any less full and real than a long one.

Green writes in the style of a teen novel using themes of a philosophical dissertation. The title alludes to a Shakespearean quote from Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” I don’t normally endorse arguing with Shakespeare, but Green does so convincingly. Surely a child isn’t blamed for having cancer, so it must be a fault of fate. Despite its theme, TFiOS (as fans call it) denies the stereotype of ''cancer books,’’ which often tell of unnaturally heroic young people in their epic battles against an unconquerable disease. Hazel frankly accepts that cancer sucks and tries, like the book, not to be defined by it. The Fault in Our Stars is not about cancer. Green instead wrote about life and death, about the existence of meaning and reason, and about what it means to love and feel pain.

John Green signed each of the 150,000 books in the first printing of The Fault in Our Stars. If you hurry, you might still get a famous 'J-scribble.’ -By CAROLINE WALLACE, St. Petersburg High