
"The fault in our Stars" by John Green
Early in John Green's new novel, The Fault in Our Stars, 16-year-old Hazel offers her succinct opinion of novels about people with cancer: "Cancer books suck." This may or may not be true (I haven't read a lot of cancer books), but either way it's an extraordinary thing for Hazel to say, given that she is the narrator of a cancer book--one that, moreover, does not suck. In fact, it is damn near genius.
Hazel has cancer herself: "thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs." The lung cancer keeps her permanently short of breath and...