The Fault In Our Stars Ruins My Life

Blogging lesson of the week! If you post, more people look at you’re posts.

I really should have realised this sooner …….

Anyway, onto the topic of the day – The Fault In Our Stars *breaks down into hysterical sobs*

~ three hours later ~

Yeah.

So if you haven’t read it, I’ll try do a brief summary for you, and then do massive River-Song-Spoiler-Alerts for the bits I just can’t contain 😀

Everyone happy? Let’s move on 😀

*GOD Elly, why did you give me this book!!!*

Well, the blurb is:

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

WHAT SORT OF A BLURB IS THAT????

THAT IS A RUBBISH BLURB! SOMEONE SHOULD WRITE A BETTER ONE!!

Wait – I have one (Okay, so the Time Magazine came up with this simple, simple quote):

Damn near genius.

And then Troye Sivan did this music video about it (no spoilers I promise) which made me cry even before I’d read the book!:

AND NOW I CRY EVEN MORE!

Anyway, it’s about these two kids (feel weird calling them kids – they’re older than me!) who both have cancer and they’re journeys and one of the best bits about it is that IT’S JUST SO FUNNY! I know it’s sounds weird but John Green (the author – Vlogbrothers? See, you knew you’d heard the name somewhere!) manages to make such a difficult thing both hysterically funny and heart-breakingly sad, sometimes in the space of a few pages!

This is the cover:

And this photo will make people who have read the book have a FEELS fit, and is spoiler free for everyone else!:

 

Now this bit is MAJOR RIVER-SONG-SPOILER ALERT!

*spoiler alert!* *spoiler alert!*

I think some of my favourite scenes are the eulogies – seriously, how is it possible to be laughing that hard and crying that much in the space of a few LINES!!!

So because I’m a complete crying wreck right now, I might as well share with you the three best eulogies ever written.

Isaac’s Eulogy for Augustus:

“Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should’ve gotten more.’
‘Seventeen,’ Gus corrected.
‘I’m assuming you’ve got some time, you interupting bastard.
‘I’m telling you,’ Isaac continued, ‘Augustus Waters talked so much that he’d interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
‘But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.’

Hazel’s Eulogy for Augustus:

‘My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus Knew. Gus Knows. I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories- it will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…, I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.’

 

Augustus’ Eulogy for Hazel (Written in a letter to Peter Van Houten):

Van Houten,

I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.

Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.

(Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.

People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.

After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.

A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.

I do Augustus.

I do.

*spoiler free from here!* *spoiler free from here!*

AND THEN THE BOOK ENDS AND NOW I’M EVEN MORE OF A CRYING WRECK AND I’M GOING TO GO AND CRY IN A CORNER NOW.

If you haven’t read the book, read it. Now. GO!

And if you have …… come over sometime. I can probably find a spare box of tissues.

DFTBA,

Beth

P.S. If want to remain 100% spoiler free, don’t look at tags.