The Fault in Our Stars

Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter ♦ John Green | Rezension

Die Prosa ist so exquisit, dass sie fast ungerecht ist, und sie hat mir das Herz herausgerissen. Ich weinte, ich lächelte und ich klammerte mich an mein geschundenes Herz, welches immer wieder mitfühlend brach.



Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter ♦ John Green

Meinung

In Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter ist Hazel Lancaster, eine schwerkranke Sechzehnjährige mit Lungenkrebs im Endstadium, die Hauptfigur. Das Leben ist so schon herausfordernd genug, aber der Krebs hebt es auf eine ganz andere Stufe. Jeden Tag kämpft Hazel gegen ihr tragisches Schicksal an, bis sie auf Augustus Waters, eine weitere junge sterbende Seele, trifft. Plötzlich kann sich das Leben in show more den letzten Tagen und Stunden vor dem Tod überraschend zum Guten wenden.
Aber auch zum Schlechten.

Die meisten Bücher lese ich nicht nur mit den Augen, sondern auch mit dem Herzen. Oftmals geht das auch gut, aber manchmal ist es mit Risiken verbunden.
Ich hatte des Öfteren ein sehr mulmiges Gefühl im Magen, während ich durch die Seiten blätterte. Teils dachte ich, dass ich beim Lesen des unvorstellbar qualvollen Leidens selbst sterbe. Wahrscheinlich bin ich dies auch ein bisschen.
Trotz all der Qualen kommt Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter mit großartigen Momente daher – diese sind zwar rar, aber unglaublich intensiv – welche das Buch sehr, sehr lohnenswert machen.


Fazit

★★★★★

Das Schicksal ist ein mieser Verräter ist eine grausame Geschichte, die zweifellos fast alle LeserInnen in ständigen Tränen und mit einem hohen Taschentuchverbrauch zurücklassen wird.
Extrem berührend, oft sehr erhebend und motivierend, mit einem Anteil an humor- und liebevollen Momenten. Atemberaubend herzzerreißend. Es gibt so viele denkwürdige Zitate und Momente, die jeder für sich selbst entdecken sollte. Sehr empfehlenswert. Ein Meisterwerk für junge Erwachsene, aber auch jene darüber hinaus.


This review was first posted at The Art of Reading. show less

You remember that scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere are sitting in the bathtub together, and she has her legs wrapped around him while he tells her about his father and how much therapy it took him to say the words "I am very angry with my father?" That is how this book made me feel. I will need many thousands of dollars of therapy to properly express that I am angry at John Green. How can you write a book about two kids with cancer falling desperately in love and then even though you know one of them is going to die, rip the carpet out from under the reader?

This book was amazing, beautiful, and really just defies words. I found myself crying several times. Not the loud notice me sobs with the ugly face, but show more the really sad tears that just slip silently down your face unheeded. I couldn't have stopped them if I tried. Hazel is a sixteen year old girl with terminal cancer. Her mother, thinking her daughter must be depressed, forces her to go to a support group. It is here that she will meet Augustus Waters, her star crossed lover. They get each other in a way that no one else can. He think she looks like mid-millennial Natalie Portman, she thinks he is so hot. He spends his Wish, because she already spent hers, on a trip to Amsterdam where she can meet and question the author of her all time favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. And then...

I mean seriously WHAT THE ACTUAL F*** John Green. Do you see this? I am driven to foul language by this book. I am very angry at this book. There, I said it. I will say it again. I am very angry at this book. show less

One could so easily write a recap of The Fault in Our Stars that makes it sound worse than any tragic Lifetime movie, which wouldn’t give this book anywhere near enough credit for the way it manages to transcend all the melodramatic cliché that usually comes along with young people dying of cancer.

One could also easily dissect the novel and find its themes – the misguided ways we wish to be remembered after death; the Maslow hierarchy is an insult to the human experience; books belong to their readers – already served up in four-minutes-or-less videos on Green's YouTube channel. But that doesn’t make their exploration in this story any less worthy. If the whip-smart characters are a little overly intellectual and pretentious, show more they are also recognizable as real teenagers. Their story is funny, and sad, and philosophical, often all at the same time. show less

recommended for: for 12 & all the way up; for kids who know sick kids or who are sick; cancer story fans

First I have to say: Thank you John Green for not letting me down. I was so afraid the end, or even the middle, would greatly disappoint me, but it was close enough to perfect.

Hilarious! Love the humor! The writing style and storytelling is so engaging. The book was very hard to put down.

I love that Hazel is a vegetarian for animal suffering reasons, and that her family celebrates ½ birthdays as I did and do for kids (and I share a birthday with Hazel, and I love sharing birthdays with book characters), and that she is intelligent and articulate, is philosophical, and has a fabulous sense of humor, and that she is honest. I really show more love Hazel.

I also enjoyed so many of the other characters, major and minor, virtually all of them.

I was worried at some points because it seems as though in every young adult book the main teen characters have to have not just a love interest, but a fully formed, too adult relationship. Here, it turns out, I ended up enjoying the relationship. It felt real for these characters, and it worked.

Most of the book takes place in Indiana and I have a good friend there and have been there and so I enjoyed the setting. Amsterdam and the Anne Frank House make an appearance too, and I loved vicariously visiting; it’s a place I’ve always wanted to go.

I did hate that the Support Group was so Christian, so religious; maybe those kids didn’t mind, but it sure didn’t seem inclusive, and I found myself wondering whether there were alternative support groups available. (Yes, these kids and their situations seemed that real.) I did appreciate the philosophizing about religious matters that Hazel and Gus do.

One thing I admired so much about this book is that it doesn’t glorify cancer or leave out its suffering. To me, that’s crucial when writing about cancer, whether the account is fiction or non-fiction. And it often doesn’t happen.

This book should be on all teen hospital units. I know that those units carefully screen which books they shelve and I have a sinking feeling many might deliberately exclude this one, but that would be a huge mistake. The kids would enjoy reading this book, and anyone who felt like reading it would not be harmed by it.

I always like cancer stories, fictional and non-fiction, so I knew this book would probably be my cup of tea. (This is a mastery issue: ever since I was 11, and saw my mother die from cancer, I have dreaded nothing more than getting cancer, and would not find my own cancer story one bit entertaining. I've since learned to be justly terrified of ALS too, but cancer remains my biggest fear. And fire, but the latter would be a quick story.)

A note: I loved how in the acknowledgments in the back of the book he mentions the book The Emperor of All Maladies, a book I started a while back and am enjoying, though for quite a while I’ve been on page 250 of 571.

ETA:

I want to add some thoughts, some posted in the comments below but that I want in the review proper:

I did see one plot point coming from afar but another I thought would come did not, and I was grateful for that!!!

Yes, it's hilarious, but no, I am not callous. It's also tragic and sad and powerfully emotional. I felt so many emotions, including infuriated.

This book was so beautifully written. show less

This is, by far, one of the hardest reviews I have had to write. I had actually won a print copy of this book in a giveaway or contest or blogging event of some sort last year, though I cannot currently remember which. I then proceeded to use my audible credit to acquire it this month. I then took the Kindle version out from a friend's public library (as she was kind enough to allow me to use her login for ebooks, since she does not use the service and my library sucks).

I read this book in about 24 hours, and my emotions are so all over the place that I fear this review will be incoherent and rambling at best, but I have to write it. I have to get the thoughts out of my head or I will not be able to sleep. This is the second night in a show more row that this book has kept me awake.

I both love and hate this book and the author right now. I am so thoroughly pissed at the outcome, and then also so thoroughly lost for the unanswered questions that I am left with. Much like "An Imperial Affliction" left Hazel struggling, desperate to know what happens before she dies, I have the same kind of inner turmoil over the outcome for this book.

Additionally, I thought that I would be forever changed for having seen "A Walk to Remember," and this was an even grander roller coaster ride. I feel as a soaking wet towel, wrung vigorously and left hanging in a twist over the shower curtain. I am not even sure how to put this into words properly.

John Green has taken my shriveled cynical heart and left it bleeding on the floor, utterly without a sense of why it is no longer within the confines of my ribcage. I was so invested in the characters of Gus and Hazel, and I now wonder what I will do without their story to fill my heart. Damn you, John Green! Why must you toy with my emotions so. Now I have to go read more of your books so that I can be ripped apart even more. show less

Much has been written about Hazel and Augustus, but I often found there "wisdom beyond their years" a bit much. The book never brough me to tears, but it was compelling and very readable. It is not dreary, which is what often makes me wary of cancer narratives.

The more interesting thing to untangle is the role of Van Houten and his book. In many ways, the old guy is the uncaring universe that Hazel wishes would notice her. But instead, she is the one that notices it. That said, it seems weird that she would obsess about the continued adventures of the book's secondary characters. If the one thing that justifies her other worldly literacy, it would be that she is taking university-level lit courses, and one would think they would show more encourage her to analyze the book more critically than just wallow in her unexplained feelings for it.

Or maybe it's just Green subtly begging us not to ask for the tales of Hazel's mom as a social worker.

I'm in my fifties and I have great tendencies towards pomposity and wit, er, annoyance, and at my hardest strivings, I don't come close to the two mouthy teenagers that form the unlucky population of this book. There mercurial moods and occasional churlishness seem realistic, but that both of these two have such verbal skills makes it hard to distinguish them from each other. The dialogue ends up very "writerly", much like the staffers in Sorkin's West Wing. It makes it hard to connect with Hazel and Augustus, no matter the desperation of their plight.

As a parent, the plot of the book feels like my nightmare scenario. It actually speaks to that surprisingly well, and the Hazel's parents are relatively wholesome models that it felt like getting lessons from Daniel Tiger's Neighbourhood.

In short, the elements that made this book compulsively readable (and keep it from being a dreary sickness read) also lend artifice to the characters, which really illustrates how difficult the task was that Green set for himself in writing this. That said, I have been fortunate to have lost very few people in my life to cancer, and one of them read this book and gave it 5-stars, so maybe take his review over mine. show less

Hello. My name is Diana and I'm part of the John Green Fans Anonymous. JGFA is a group I made up for people who, like me, read John Green books thinking they are strong enough to get through them without becoming a slobbering mess at the halfway point. However, like any other "Anonymous" groups, people sometimes fail in their attempts. Such is the case here, as with pretty much every other attempt I've helplessly made to read anything by said author. I'd like to take this time to say I'm happy I've failed. In fact, if I hadn't failed, I would worry that I might not have a heart or working emotions which would be terribly upsetting (though if I didn't have emotions, I wouldn't be able to get upset so I guess it would be nothing). My show more overall point is, that I feel like maybe reading about horrible things doesn't necessarily make me feel horrible (when the novel is done right) but rather nostalgic or uplifted. When I read, I'm looking for emotion and imagination, critical thinking and a clever hand...and when I come across those types of books, I know it's worth the fail. show less