I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, my friends. My whole life I've been a reader. I'm typically reading 2 or 3 books concurrently, always obsessed with the next must-read, and highly dissatisfied if I finish a book and I don't have a new one on hand to bite into. But recently I discovered it had been a long time since I read a new book, and what was worse, I didn't care that I wasn't reading anything. What the heck happened to Amy?! So I grabbed the first pop-lit book my friends recommended to me. I think I'm making my way back into the game!
So, just in case you have not heard about this book (what rock have you been living under??), let me give you the scoop. I have not yet seen the major motion picture, so I'm just going with what I read.
This story is about Hazel, a 16-year-old girl with terminal lung cancer, and Augustus, a 17-year-old boy in remission from osteosarcoma. They meet through a mutual friend, Isaac, another cancer-stricken teen, at a support group for youth battling cancer. Of course, it's a novel about teenagers, so a relationship develops. But Green's story is about teenagers who are staring straight at death, living with the fact that their infinities are much smaller than other people's infinities. It's a book about kids with cancer, so it's sad. But I laughed far more than I cried. Oh yes, I did shed tears. I find that the older I get, tears are more prone to fall.
There are a lot of words in this book I had never heard before. Thank heavens for the built-in dictionary in my Nook app.
Sometimes the book seemed a bit pretentious, but then again, it's told from the POV of a snarky, dying, 16-year-old girl. I don't think most normal teenagers talk like that, but I was never anything close to a normal teenager, so I can't count on my own experiences to guide me here.
I will openly admit I can be a bit of a prude when it comes to my literature, and a lot of my friends I recommend books to are also on the prudish side. So I will state for the record that there is some swearing in the book, mostly mild but at least one f-bomb. Also, there is an intimacy scene between Hazel and Augustus. I'm not really wild over the idea of two minors getting it on, but as far as sex scenes go in books, this one was tastefully written.
If I had to rate this book on a scale of 1-10, I'd give it a glowing 8.9. I have never read Green before, so I don't know if his literary flavor is the same for all his novels. But I thoroughly enjoyed his writing voice. Let me give you a few examples that resonated with me. Or maybe more than a few!
"Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die."
"Republic of Cancervania."
"Caroline is no longer suffering from personhood."
"Come over here so I can examine your face with my hands and see deeper into your soul than a sighted person ever could."
"Her brain cancer was of the variety that makes you not you before it makes you not alive."
Okay, so out of context those passages weren't as stimulating as they were in the story. I really did enjoy the book, despite my prudish tendencies.
