There's a game I like to play with Mallory, my 15-year-old daughter: We go to a bookstore and walk shelf to shelf and she points out which books I've read. It's not like I've read thousands of books, but I have read hundreds, and she is incredible at both remembering which books she's seen me read and guessing which other books I might have read. (This likely belies the idea that you can't judge a book by its cover: I am probably drawn to certain covers because she really is very good at the guessing part of the game.) So assuming I might be the one to ask, she showed me this picture, a quote from her favourite book, a few weeks ago and asked me if I could define "fathom" for her:
I hesitated as I looked at the quote because I was having trouble making sense of it as a whole; just what did these words mean strung together? In what sense was fathom really being used as a verb here? Since I didn't answer, she asked, "No? You don't know what it means?" Assuming that the author used the word for a specific reason, I explained that fathom was originally a nautical term, used to measure the depths of the ocean, and even though it has come to mean "to understand", it has a nuanced meaning of much more: to explore and discover something to its depths; to understand. She nodded thoughtfully, that's about what she thought, but I was left wondering what trickery is this? Does this author weave together vaguely related words in an effort to look profound to a YA readership? Then yesterday, she asked me if I would like to read The Fault In Our Stars so she could use me as a sounding board for a big project she's doing on the book for school. It only took an afternoon to read, and to my delight, it was a wonderful read.
I couldn't help but read this book as a Mom first, and although it's narrated by the 16 year old girl with cancer, Hazel, it does justice to the experience of her parents:
There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer.And even more so:
I finally ended up in the ICU with pneumonia, and my mom knelt by the side of my bed and said, "Are you ready, sweetie?" and I told her I was ready, and my dad just kept telling me he loved me in this voice that was not breaking so much as already broken, and I kept telling him that I loved him, too, and everyone was holding hands, and I couldn't catch my breath, my lungs were acting desperate, gasping, pulling me out of the bed trying to find a position that could get them air, and I was embarrassed by their desperation, disgusted that they wouldn't just let go, and I remember my mom telling me that it was okay, that I would be okay, and my father was trying so hard not to sob that when he did, which was regularly, it was an earthquake. And I remember wanting not to be awake.That passage had me welling up, and as it happens fairly early in the book, I was afraid that it was going to be a tragic and mawkish story and geared myself up to have my emotions manipulated-- but The Fault in Our Stars isn't an overly sad and sentimental story at all. I found it thoughtful and dramatic and poignant and funny. Sure, it's mostly gallows humour, but I thought that the language showed respect for the characters in the book and the people reading it.
Some funny parts:
"Ma'am," Augustus said, nodding toward her, "your daughter's car has just been deservingly egged by a blind man. Please close the door and go back inside or we'll be forced to call the police."
"How are the eyes?""Oh, excellent," he said. "I mean, they're not in my head is the only problem.""Awesome, yeah," Gus said. "Not to one-up you or anything, but my body is made out of cancer.""So I heard," Isaac said, trying not to let it get to him. He fumbled toward Gus's hand and found only his thigh."I'm taken," Gus said.
"I can only hope,” Julie said, turning back to Gus, “they grow into the kind of thoughtful, intelligent young men you’ve become.”I resisted the urge to audibly gag. “He’s not that smart,” I said to Julie.“She’s right. It’s just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.”“Right, it’s primarily his hotness,” I said.“It can be sort of blinding,” he said.“It actually did blind our friend Isaac,” I said.“Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?”“You cannot.”“It is my burden, this beautiful face.”“Not to mention your body.”“Seriously, don’t even get me started on my hot bod. You don’t want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace’s breath away,” he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.“Okay, enough,” Gus’s dad said.In addition to the funny wordplay, I thought that John Green's use of his large vocabulary shows respect for his readers. Just as my daughter asked me to define "fathom", The Fault in Our Stars is rich in difficult words, and sophisticated philosophy, that might require further research.
I've always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what you call them: Gus or Augustus? Me, I was always just Hazel, univalent Hazel.The use of the word "univalent" isn't strictly necessary there, so I asked Mal what she thought of the vocabulary of this book. She said she didn't find it particularly difficult, she could parse the meaning of most words from their context, and she said that since she follows the author's youtube channel, she knows he's very smart and doesn't speak down to his audience. How wonderful! It reminds me of A Series of Unfortunate Events-- but while Lemony Snicket would define the difficult words as he went along, John Green is using language for an older readership, trusting that they will know how to find the definitions they need on their own.
And then there's the notion that The Fault in Our Stars is likely read by Cancer Kids (in the language of the book) and I think (from a perspective of zero experience with the disease) that it does a very good job of describing the experience without patronising or lionizing the kids themselves. They react with sorrow and anger and humour and self-pity, the gamut of possible responses, which paints them as human and ordinary; as more than just their diagnoses.
According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul. But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough.I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. "I'm sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.""Me too," he said."But it isn't," I said."I know," he said."There are no bad guys.""Yeah.""Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive."And:
"What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner."And then when they meet Peter Van Houten and he's horrible and nasty, surely the first time in the postdiagnosis lives of Hazel and Gus that anyone has been so mean to them, I had to wonder what a real Cancer Kid would think while reading this part-- I'm assuming they are grateful that there's at least one character in fiction who won't treat them as too delicate to offend:
“You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation."And:
“Like all sick children," he answered dispassionately, "you say you don't want pity, but your very existence depends upon it.”Goodreads has 800 favourite quotes listed from this book, I have selected slightly less, but that's a testament to just how good the writing is. I haven't read a lot of YA fiction, but if I had to compare it to what I know, I would rate The Fault in Our Stars above Harry Potter (not least because I'd rather fight Voldemort with magic than cancer with chemo-- only one of those situations has a possible positive outcome) and above The Hunger Games (ditto fighting other teenagers) and most definitely above Twilight (*gag*). This book, along with the strong plot and characters and language, also dips into philosophy (blatantly and obliquely), which again speaks to the author's respect for his readers:
Encouragement: Without Pain, How Can We Know Joy? (This is an old argument in the field of Thinking About Suffering, and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries, but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate.)
I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it -- or my observation of it -- is temporary?
We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. Augustus Waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He died after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim -- as you will be -- of the universe's need to make and unmake all that is possible.And although these might be considered needlepoint-on-a-pillow statements, they synthesize important parts of the book, and I like them:
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.
As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.
The world is not a wish-granting factory.
I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?
I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.It wasn't until I read The Fault in Our Stars that I could really understand the meaning of the quote Mal first shared with me: It appears on the last page of the book, and as much as it might have been a puzzle to me as a stand-alone line, I am better for having plumbed this story to its depths, to have fathomed its meaning.
Okay?
Okay.
This is the first book that Mallory has asked me to read in years. The last one was Ida B, which coincidentally also involves cancer, and which had me bawling throughout. I don't think it's easy for an author to walk the line between honesty and sentimentality, but I am grateful that my kid can recognise the difference (and also that she continues to understand me -- to fathom me? -- and what I might like).
