The Fault in Our Stars Movie Trailer and Mini Review

So John Green’s NYT Bestselling The Fault in Our Stars movie comes out June 6th! And if you think recognize the main actress, Shailene Woodley, it’s because you’ve seen her face plastered on almost every Divergent merchandise for the past year.

What did I think of the book?

It reminded me a lot of C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. Meaning, brilliance dripped off its pages, but (let’s be real) I only understood about 1/3rd of it.

Which is why this is a (very) mini review.

I have the feeling no matter how many times I’ll read this, I’ll never be able to fully wrestle out all the meaning stuffed within all its lines.

This is the best I can do:

Hazel Grace has cancer. She is dying slowly by having her lungs not act like lungs and drown her by filling up with fluid. Her greatest wish is to travel to Amersterdam to meet the author of her favorite book and discover what happens to the characters after the novel ends.

Augustus Waters visits her cancer support group. He wears a prosthetic leg that replaces what cancer stole from him. He falls in love with Hazel and uses his Wish to get her to Amsterdam.

The book about death and love and pain and living. And that’s the shallow part my soul could wade through and shape into words. (Green spent 10 years writing this thing. TEN YEARS. It shows.)

And for the words I cannot form, I’m stealing quotes from the book to hopefully paint a picture of what it’s about and how I feel about it:

“The thing about pain . . . is that it demands to be felt.” (I totally get this one, as I deal with my own pain)

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”

“That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.”

“If you don’t live a life in service of a greater good, you’ve gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won’t get either a life or a death that means anything.”

“I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars.”

“She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth.”

“I told myself – as I’ve told myself before – that the body shuts down when the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn’t slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.”

I wonder if I can’t quite understand it is because the book hits a bit too close to home. Like when somebody stands too close to your face and you go all cross-eyed, but instinctively you know who they are, though you can’t really see them. Or maybe I’m just not smart enough.

Maybe once I reread/triple-read/quadruple read I’ll finally understand.

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