Truth be told I never intended to read the book “The Fault In Our Stars” … I had only heard about the book and author when my friend Jaime tweeted that his book was lost in transit to Ferndale, Michigan - despite placing a pre-order for it months ago thru Amazon.
Having the day off, I drove over to Target (my nearest book store - which is insanely sad when you think about it) and picked up a signed copy - not knowing what it was about. Its second highest selling point for me was that the cover of the book had a Nick Hornby feel to it. The first was having the book in my grubby hands before Jaime in Detroit.
Due to a rather busy work week, I found myself reading about 4 chapters a day… feeling the urge to complete the book in one sitting but putting it away long enough to think about some of topics and tones in the book.
My mom is currently in Mexico City, sitting bedside to an ailing Grandmother who has been at death’s door for nearly 2 weeks.
Contacting my mom is difficult… she’s rarely away from the hospital and when she is, it’s usually at hours I’m at work or sound asleep. My mom has 6 siblings all of which are brothers. She’s the only surviving daughter that my Grandmother ever had. If I remember correctly, my Grandmother gave birth to another little girl but she died at some point during infancy.
My mother actually had a near brush with death as a child too… she suffered from what I can only describe as a 3rd world fever, but she clung on and has lived to this point a very healthy life.
I’m not exactly sure how my mom is feeling right now… I haven’t talked to her in nearly 2 weeks. I’m sure she feels a burden of some kind to not leave my grandmother’s side because she’s the only daughter.
This long, personal aside - played a big part in my reading of this book because there’s a lot of emotions I’m working thru as I can’t talk to my mom as she’s possibly going through one of the hardest ordeals in her life.
The Fault In Our Stars - is a story about a 16 year old girl (Hazel) with a terminal case of lung cancer. She’s elongated her life thru the use of a drug I can’t possibly spell and I won’t bother to look it up because it would be a spoiler of sorts.
The book touches on friendships, discovering love and why you should always avoid meeting your heroes.
There’s actually one part in the book (the eulogy for those who have read the book) where I actually had to put the book down for nearly an hour because I couldn’t stop weeping.
In retrospect, I think I was working thru a number of the emotions I mentioned above… but I must give a tremendous tip of the cap to John Green who wrote what may possibly be one of the best books to come out in 2012.
Highly recommend you pick this up for yourself and friends.