Having been sucked so deeply into this book that finishing it felt like coming up for air, I find that it has continued to weigh upon me many hours later. And, yes, this book made me bawl because it was so freaking sad and beautiful, and even though I could see the end coming, that didn't stop it from being freaking sad and beautiful.
There are some things about the book that are hard to swallow. The teenagers don't talk like real teenagers -- they talk like Rory Gilmore if she had terminal cancer. They talk the way we (and they) wish teenagers talked. But, this book is so good that I can forgive the author that little conceit.
There is little to say that hasn't already been said, and I am reviewing this book only because I swore that I would review every book I read in 2012. Nothing that I can say about The Fault in Our Stars will even begin to say what I want to say as well as John Green already said it. So, I'm going to inflict a few of my favorite quotes on the readers of this review and then I am going to yell at everyone reading this review to GO READ THIS BOOK. Because this John Green guy is totally the bomb. In a pile of dross, he is the gold.
"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said, Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is."
"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you."
and last
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/but in ourselves." Easy enough to say when you're a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars.
Read this book. That is all.
No comments:
Post a Comment