The Fault In Ours Stars (TFIOS): An Insightful Depiction Of Teens Living With Serious Illness

I have to confess that even though I am a grown woman I seem to like many young adult –teenage books (I am still seventeen at heart). I am frequently asking my daughter and nieces about books they enjoyed when I’m looking for something to read. So far the books I have read include some teenage love stories happening in a futuristic dystopia in which the main characters are at risk of dying because of being in a arena fighting other children like in the hunger games; or being at risk of getting injured while performing difficult stunts like jumping from a train like in the divergent series.  The Fault in Ours Stars (TFIOS) by John Green is also about teens who fall in love and who are actually dying because they both have cancer. The book is narrated from the perspective of Hazel Lancaster a teenage girl with stage IV thyroid cancer metastatic to the lungs. Hazel uses a nasal cannula connected to an oxygen tank because her “lungs suck at being lungs”.   At the insistence of her parents she reluctantly attends a youth Cancer Support Group.  “Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.”  However things drastically change when a gorgeous boy named Augustus “Gus” Waters suddenly appears at support group.  Augustus Waters is seventeen, he has osteosarcoma and had part of a leg amputated. Gus and Hazel connect and the romance s...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Carer Workers Authors: Source Type: blogs