Hazel Grace Lancaster is 16, and has lived with stage-IV terminal
cancer for three years. She is living ‘My Best Life’, but her mother thinks she
is depressed, and pressures her to go to a support group. There she meets
Augustus Waters, a 17-year-old boy who has ostensibly beaten cancer, even
though he lost his leg to it.
Hazel Grace and Augustus are both irreverent, funny, and
refuse to pity themselves, or be pitied. They discuss existential questions of
live and death, and slowly fall in love. They discuss their ‘cancer perks’ – things cancer
kids get that regular kids don’t. They
talk about ‘paragons of stoic cancer-kid heroism’. In other words, Hazel Grace
and Augustus are not your typical teenagers.
This book is a love story, if an unconventional one, ineffably
sad and yet somehow funny and uplifting and tender. I tend to shy away from ‘best books…’, but am
really glad I gave this one a chance.
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