At age twenty-two, John Green worked as a student chaplain in a children’s hospital.
Let’s take a moment and consider all the implications of that, and why he is making a colossal understatement when he described the experience as "devastating." That was about twelve years ago, and Green has said in interviews that because of this experience, he’s spent twelve years trying to write a book about kids with cancer - not poster children of strength and courage and illness-granted wisdom, but real kids and their families and friends who have to cope with the fact that they will die young.
All novels are personal, but Green’s novels seem, to me, to be especially so. But this one is personal in a different way. With this novel, Green isn’t trying to exorcize the memory of the girl who stomped on his heart in high school. This goes deeper than high school romance and Manic Pixie Dream Girl angst. This is about life, death, illness, love, heroism, and how a sixteen-year-old is supposed to deal with the fact that she will die and leave everyone she loves behind.
Maybe it’s just because I’ve been watching vlogbrothers videos for four years and feel like I’m actually acquainted with John Green, but this is the most deeply personal novel I’ve ever read. It’s for that reason that I don’t feel like I can review this like a normal book. John Green didn’t write this story for me, and so I don’t feel like I have any place saying that it’s amazing and beautiful and heartbreaking. And I certainly can’t criticize any of its minor faults. All I can say, really, is that you have to read this for yourself, and go from there.
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Okay, you guys know me better than that. I have one big complaint, which I will describe here, and all I ask is that you remember that I still gave this five stars. So that was annoying, as was Augustus’s general air of overly-charming pretentious skeeziness in the beginning. But I forgive him for it, because lest we forget, he is seventeen. If his character was twenty-two he’d be the most obnoxious jackass on the planet, but because he’s just a kid, I was willing to forgive him. Still hate the cigarette thing, though.