At one time Green had apparently intended to be a minister and vestiges of a Christian worldview can be found in the book, but only vestiges. Mostly he teaches—well, I don’t know what he teaches. It’s not nihilism, but neither is it Christian hope and optimism. In a novel about illness and death, he makes suffering meaningless and eternity dubious. Of equal concern is the minor plot line that brings the sixteen and seventeen year-old together in bed. Though it is not particularly alluring or explicit, the moral is that it is far better to find a soulmate and have sex with him or her than die a virgin.

It has nineteen thousand reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of five stars. I try to keep up with what’s new and notable in publishing but even with nineteen thousand reviews I had no intention of reading this novel until both my son and daughter (separately) asked if they could buy it. After all, they said, all their friends are reading it. It’s called The Fault in Our Stars and the movie adaptation has just hit the silver screen, opening as the most popular new movie in North America.

(I am assigning this review a full-out spoiler alert; you have been warned.) The Fault in Our Stars centers around two teenaged characters who are brought together in a common battle against cancer. Hazel, who narrates the book, is sixteen and has lungs so badly damaged by cancer that she must always be connected to a source of oxygen. Though drugs are currently controlling her illness, she knows that she has only years, not decades, to live. One day she attends a church-based cancer support group where she meets Augustus who is seventeen and recovering from osteosarcoma.

Hazel and Augustus immediately hit it off and begin a romance centered around Hazel’s favorite book: An Imperial Affliction by the fictional author Peter Van Houten. This book so closely describes her life and condition that she views it as her Bible, the book that best describes reality as she experiences it. Because Van Houten deliberately left the book unfinished, her dream is to go to Holland to meet him and to find closure by finding out what happened to the characters.

As she and Augustus date, we find out that Augustus has an outstanding Wish (granted by a Make-a-Wish foundation) and he uses his wish to take Hazel to Amsterdam to meet the elusive Van Houten. They do meet him and find that he is an angry, raving alcoholic and that they will get no answers from him. They deal with their disappointment by going to a hotel and taking one another’s virginity.

No sooner do they return to America then Augustus finds that his cancer has returned worse than ever. Hazel stays by his side, their love growing all the while, until he dies.

The story isn’t exactly morbid, but it also doesn’t qualify as feel-good literature. I suppose most people probably cry at the end. But as I read The Fault in Our StarsI found it very difficult to understand why so many young people are raving about it. I read Twilight and immediately understood why young women had responded to it so strongly; I read The Hunger Games and immediately understood why both young men and young women enjoyed it. But The Fault in Our Stars? What sets it apart from the billion-and-one other teenage romance dramas? It is much less clear to me.

But I do have a theory. As far as I can see, Green has not written teens as they are, but as they’d like to be perceived.

Read More