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Dec 10, 2018IndyPL_SteveB rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
A major winner from Indianapolis author John Green and still one of the 10 best novels for young adults I have ever read. This could be described as a romance between two teenagers with cancer, but that would be both accurate and completely inadequate. Yes, Hazel and Gus are terminally ill; but the book is about much more. It is about grim humor in the face of dying. It is about being noticed by the universe and the debate over whether wanting to leave something behind is noble or absurd. It is about tracking down your favorite author and finding out that he isn’t any smarter than you are. It is about finding the words to tell others who you are as an individual. The novel has been amazingly popular with teenagers because of Hazel’s voice: tough, pained, smart, smart-ass. This is not a plot-driven book. You might say it is attitude driven. You might also say that it is driven by something which is internal to everyone with intelligence and self-awarenesss -- trying to extract meaning from life without knowing for sure if life or the universe has any “meaning.” This is not a book which will tell you that death itself is good, or that it has meaning. LIFE might have meaning; death is an absence of meaning.