The Fault in Our Stars

A book that tries too hard.

I'm not talking about it being a Cancer Book, although it is that, and an author's choice to write a Cancer Book always invites the question of whether it's a cheap attempt at award-whoring. I'm not prepared to cast that particular aspersion at The Fault In Our Stars, although it's always in the back of my mind with a work like this. Unfortunately, it falls down in other ways.

Fault is the story of Hazel, a cancer patient. Hazel was not expected to be alive at this juncture, but thanks to an entirely fictional miracle drug known as Phalanxifor, she's still alive. She's not cured, she still has cancer, she just isn't dead. Further details might just spoil the plot, so I'll omit them.

The title is taken from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, excerpted below:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.Men at some time are masters of their fates:The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caesar'?Why should that name be sounded more than yours?Write them together, yours is as fair a name;Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ‘em,Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.

(Thanks for the reference, MIT.)

Initially I didn't make the connection, because the amount of actual Shakespearean language I've retained at any one time is vanishingly small, and I interpreted the title completely differently. I liked the book more when I just had the title and my misinterpretation to base my opinion on.

I had great hopes for the book, but almost immediately it disappointed me. With apologies to Ed Byrne: Ever had a friend tell a story culminating in his witty, conversation-ending one-liner? It's bullshit, right? There's no way he came up with that on the spot. Green's characters are like that. His protagonist is a 16-year old girl, but she's the wittiest 16-year old this side of Rory Gilmore. She's like your hypothetical friend. It's bullshit. It sounds false to my ear and takes me completely of the read.

Green's concepts about video gaming are of the same bent that gave us 1995's Hackers: a failed attempt by an outsider to talk as though he understands the subject matter. It's as phony as Hazel's snappy patter.

Green plays fast-and-loose with his central concept as well. As he freely acknowledges in his afterword, he solicited medical consultation, and then ignored it when it suited him.

It's not all bad. When Green isn't overindulging himself, some of the prose is natural and wonderful. I still don't think getting to those bits is worth reading the rest of it. Two stars for the bits of good prose and for not sugarcoating mortality. It certainly did not deserve to be Time's #1 fiction book of 2012. I thought Lev Grossman had better taste than that.

Nota bene: This is nominally a “young adult” book. I cannot for the life of me see why, unless we are subscribing to the apparently-common but nonsensical definition of “young adult” literature as being literature about young adults, a worthless category that does not merit recogniition. To be “young adult” is not a license to be a bit shit.