Format: Paperback
Pages: 315
ISBN: 9780141345659
Published by: Penguin Books
Price: 399 INR (Seems to be priceless though!)
“A novel of life and death and the people caught in between, The Fault in Our Stars is John Green at his best. You laugh, you cry, and then you come back for more.”
-Marcus Zusak, bestselling author of The Book Thief.
John Green had me hooked onto the #1 New York Times Bestselling novel by the first sentence. There is some magic in that first sentence of the first chapter whose essence never leaves you till the very end. If Looking for Alaska was something you could identify yourself with, ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ would be something whose world you’d want to live in! Hazel Grace sings a beautiful story in first person as she narrates the tale. What I noticed while rereading it was that Green wrote that kind of English that we all are familiar with. Unlike many authors, he does not write complicated sentences with even more strange words. Rather, his words are simple- so simple that one wonders how he has managed to stitch a story so delightful with them.
A ‘depressing as hell’ Support Group for cancer patients are what Hazel’s mother forces her to attend. That is where our Hazel meets the only hot boy to have come to the group: Augustus Waters. Gus, as we all fondly come to call him later, suffers from Osteosarcoma – which is cancer in the bones for dummies. Hazel is drawn to him like a passer-by is drawn to a passerby with food. And their chemistry is nothing short of electric. The flirting between Hazel and Gus begins lightly. The reader can’t help but feel bouts of glee as he goes over certain sentences again and again. There is a conversation between Hazel and her father that is as touching as it can get.
Another thing I closely noticed in the novels I’d been reading of late was that the central character of every novel had a sidekick (a supporting actor, if you would) and for some strange reason, every sidekick in these novels had a few similar qualities. This made me think that all of them had almost the same face in my mind. Sadly, Isaac is a fruit from the same tree.
Long-faced and skinny, Isaac’s blond hair could not hide the fact that his eyes know they are going blind in a few days’ time. With that shocking realization, we meet a sidekick who stays just for the first half of the novel. Which is how I like it to be. His sense of humor is deadpan – something I adore in people. When his friends console him stating that the good news is that he won’t be deaf (because Isaac says that he’d rather be deaf than blind), he replies
“Thank you for explaining that my eye cancer isn’t going to make me deaf. I feel so fortunate that an intellectual giant like yourself would deign to operate on me.”
With its movie version releasing on the 6th of June this year, readers worldwide have one more reason to read this masterpiece again. This is a book that you won’t want to share with anyone, but keep on reading over and over again. There is magic in this book, which is innocent yet understanding.
Overall Rating: 8.5/ 10
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2 comments
Armin says:
Jan 14, 2014
BTL is doing a good job of introducing lovely books to us.. keep it up!
Bastab Chakraborty says:
Jan 14, 2014
@Armin, thanks for the note. Please subscribe with your email id to get further updates of new reviews, interviews and book news from us. Thanks.