John Green: the fault in our stars (2012, penguin books)
Published Nov. 8, 2012 by penguin books.
Despite the 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. (source)
This book is flawed in the way that we are all flawed. Teens with cancer living their complex lives, not just a label or an illness, not just a side effect.
Not my usual choice for genre but I'm very glad I read it.
Non ho letto Young Adult fino alla veneranda età di 25 anni. Prima, dopo un tentativo fallito con Twilight (lasciato a metà, a oggi l'unico romanzo mai finito), li trovavo stupidi. Crescendo ho capito che a volte non bisogna guardare alla superficie, che è quella che fa vendere ("due ragazzini con il cancro si innamorano!"), ma sotto. In questo libro, sono ritratti alla perfezione due modi diversi di affrontare la morte: Hazel da un lato è rassegnata all'oblio, vede la sofferenza di chi la circonda e vuole andare via facendo il meno rumore possibile ed evitando i danni collaterali, tanto da isolarsi dalla maggior parte delle sue vecchie conoscenze e da diventare vegetariana. Si autodefinisce una granata e spera che tutto finisca il prima possibile e il meno dolorosamente possibile. Dall'altro lato del ring, troviamo Augustus (detto Gus), che invece aspira ad essere ricordato e vorrebbe morire di una morte …
Non ho letto Young Adult fino alla veneranda età di 25 anni. Prima, dopo un tentativo fallito con Twilight (lasciato a metà, a oggi l'unico romanzo mai finito), li trovavo stupidi. Crescendo ho capito che a volte non bisogna guardare alla superficie, che è quella che fa vendere ("due ragazzini con il cancro si innamorano!"), ma sotto. In questo libro, sono ritratti alla perfezione due modi diversi di affrontare la morte: Hazel da un lato è rassegnata all'oblio, vede la sofferenza di chi la circonda e vuole andare via facendo il meno rumore possibile ed evitando i danni collaterali, tanto da isolarsi dalla maggior parte delle sue vecchie conoscenze e da diventare vegetariana. Si autodefinisce una granata e spera che tutto finisca il prima possibile e il meno dolorosamente possibile. Dall'altro lato del ring, troviamo Augustus (detto Gus), che invece aspira ad essere ricordato e vorrebbe morire di una morte gloriosa, ossessione che si riflette nei suoi gusti letterari, cinematografici e videoludici. Forse il libro mi ha colpito perchè mi trovo nella stessa fase di Hazel: non voglio lasciare ricordi brutti, pagando il prezzo dell'oblio, meglio essere dimenticati che essere dei traumi. Ma alla fine il libro mi ha ispirato questa riflessione: nel grande disegno delle cose, ce ne andiamo come se nulla fosse, ma per chi ci vuole bene, lasceremo sempre un'impronta. Consiglio anche la versione cinematografica, che è molto riuscita come adattamento.
@johngreen@mastodon.social's The Fault in our Stars is the story of a 16 year old girl, Hazel, riddled with terminal cancer. The novel opens with her multiple awful treatments, dependency on an oxygen tank she must take everywhere and use even while sleeping, her depression, sarcasm, loneliness.
She meets a boy at a support group, Augustus, who's lost a leg to cancer but is now cancer free. Amid shared irony, and angst, they fall slowly, then suddenly, in love, and depart on an adventure to track down the mysterious author of her favourite novel.
Any book about terminally ill children is sure to be unbearably sad, but Green's writing is so compelling that this novel will surely wring a tear from even the hardest hearted eye. (Green explicitly wants to reject the tropes of the cancer-kid genre. I'm not widely read enough to judge whether he succeeds.)
Fault in Our …
@johngreen@mastodon.social's The Fault in our Stars is the story of a 16 year old girl, Hazel, riddled with terminal cancer. The novel opens with her multiple awful treatments, dependency on an oxygen tank she must take everywhere and use even while sleeping, her depression, sarcasm, loneliness.
She meets a boy at a support group, Augustus, who's lost a leg to cancer but is now cancer free. Amid shared irony, and angst, they fall slowly, then suddenly, in love, and depart on an adventure to track down the mysterious author of her favourite novel.
Any book about terminally ill children is sure to be unbearably sad, but Green's writing is so compelling that this novel will surely wring a tear from even the hardest hearted eye. (Green explicitly wants to reject the tropes of the cancer-kid genre. I'm not widely read enough to judge whether he succeeds.)
Fault in Our Stars is cleverly a kind of reverse Romeo and Juliet, but Green has crafted a story that projects way beyond a mere teen love tragedy. Teen angst extrapolates into authentic existential angst when the teen is terminally ill, bringing into sharp focus the real problem with existence and mortality. "What's the meaning of life?" isn't a well-formulated question, but "what do I do with this life I've found myself in?" is, or better: "how do I make this life meaningful?" What does meaningful even mean? Does fame for important achievements entail meaning? Does meaning have to be public? Is being remembered by loved ones enough? What about when they die?
These questions are explicit in Hazel and Gus's banterings, but the people and places they encounter on their adventures raise related ones. If I achieve something great, and then waste the rest of my life, is it still meaningful? Can my life have meaning if I don't know it before I die? Is having a meaningful death the same as having a meaningful life?
Alas, there are many questions. Are there any definitive answers? Of course not, but there are some pretty good proposals which, in lieu of other more fantastical ones given by religion or other metaphysics, could help some of us face the yawning chasm of the void mortality confronts us with.
Green is as erudite as Borges, but with pomposity swapped out for emotional warmth. I liked this a lot, even if I'm not sure I can bear to read more of his work; I'm still recovering from the acute melancholy I underwent from "Anthropocene Reviewed" and haven't managed to steel myself yet for "Turtles all the way down".
PostScript: There's a movie adaptation of this novel. As always, movie-then-book would be the way to go.
