“the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / but in ourselves”

January 16, 2012 | Filed Under Books | Leave a Comment 

I need to write something down.

I need to articulate something, but I can’t.

The fact is that I can’t even look at the book, let alone look through its pages without feeling a tear or a hundred wanting to break through.

I bought it without knowing what it was about. I sort of just wanted a signed book by John Green, and I knew it would be, at the very least, really quite good. When I finally got my hands on it, and opened the first few pages to see the dedication, I knew I was in some serious trouble. When I read the brief synopsis in the jacket, I was seriously contemplating just putting it back on my shelf and not bothering.

I’m a crier. I’m a most particular crier when it comes to stories about degenerative diseases vs. families/friends. Again, why I didn’t just put it back on my shelf, I really don’t know.

I consumed the book in one extended sitting. The last 100 pages were spent in an alternating state of tears slowly running down my face or uncontrollable, hysterical sobs. Seriously, books make me cry a lot, but this was just ridiculous.

Not only is the story well-written and involving and true in an absolutely immense and rare way, I seem to lately have contracted a new way of taking in information that left me completely open and vulnerable to this story.

One of my favourite quotes ever is from the TV show Castle where Nathan Fillion’s character asks his love-interest (seriously, if they don’t get it on this season, I’m sending a horse head to the script writers) how you know when you’re in love. She answers simply “all the songs make sense”.

Not only are all the songs ten times more poignant now, all films, all books, all stories in general, tend to hit me in a much more direct way now, as if the path to my heart is now lit with flashing neon signs.

Somewhere along the way the main characters stopped being Hazel and Augustus and became me and my love. I couldn’t take it. It was too real.

When there were only thirty or so pages left, he came down to check on me, and all I could do was cling to him like a koala with vertigo, and it took all my will-power not to beg him with all I had to never ever die.

John Green, I love and adore you and what you do, but I can never ever re-read this book.

But thank you.