Van Houten’s narrator cuts through all of that, speaking directly to Hazel about the reality of cancer in ways that no other text has. Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy.” It is about a young girl living with cancer, but it is not a cancer book, because in Hazel’s words:

Hazel’s favorite book, one that she never talks about because “advertising it would feel like a betrayal,” is An Imperial Affliction, by a little-known author named Peter Van Houten. Hazel is a wonderful narrator because she knows all the customary expectations of someone Living With Cancer-and she enjoys deconstructing them even as she is forced to endure them. In case you worry that this will be a four-hankie, Nicholas Sparks-style sapfest, Hazel’s self-awareness will quickly dispel that notion (though you should still keep the hankies). She walks with an oxygen tank and a tube inserted into her nose to help her breathe. Despite her terminal diagnosis, she was the recipient of an experimental (and fictional) drug that shrunk her tumors and has prolonged her life. The novel stars 16-year-old Hazel Lancaster, who for the last three years has been living with Stage IV thyroidal cancer. Green takes a potentially mawkish premise and delivers an honest, immediate, and deeply resonant story, one deserving of its status as a future classic. The Fault in Our Stars feels like the stakes have been raised, a swing for the fences that tackles big themes (life, love, and death) and succeeds. But those novels were essentially variations on a theme (the shy, unpopular boy in love with the mysterious, unattainable girl from afar)-reliable entries in the YA genre but staying mainly within its conventions. Green is a literary rock star based on his first three novels, from his celebrated debut Looking for Alaska to his most recent Paper Towns. Among librarians and other book people, its name is being spoken in the same hushed tones that surrounded The Book Thief a few years ago, crossing generational lines and transcending its consignment to the Young Adult section of the bookstore. This review of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is being written some three months after the novel’s publication, but already the book feels like it is destined for an eternal shelf life. Green takes a potentially mawkish premise and delivers an honest, immediate, and deeply resonant story, one deserving of its status as a future classic.” “The Fault in Our Stars feels like the stakes have been raised, a swing for the fences that tackles big themes (life, love, and death) and succeeds.

Genre of the fault in our stars