Book of The Month: The Fault in Our Stars

"There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's 0.1 and 0.12 and 0.112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”

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 Novel ini tentang Hazel Grace, cewek 16 tahun dengan penyakit kanker yang nggak bisa disembuhkan. Suatu hari di pertemuan penderita-kanker-remaja, dia bertemu Augustus Waters, cowok cerdas, tampan dan charming. Seketika mereka menjadi akrab karena mereka sama-sama punya kecintaan terhadap buku dan punya pemikiran-pemikiran yang filosofis tentang hidup.

 Pertemuaan dengan Augustus akan menghubah hidup Hazel (yang tidak lama lagi).

Augustus, yang naksir Hazel, mengajak Hazel ke Amsterdam untuk menemui penulis favorit Hazel dengan tujuan mencari tahu kelanjutan novel ber-ending 'menggantung' yang ditulisnya. Apa yang mereka alami akan membawa perubahan terhadap mereka. 

Bisakah mereka tetap bersatu dan living life to the fullest dengan sisa waktu hidup yang tidak lama lagi? 

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Oke. Mungkin kalau baca review-nya terkesan 'biasa' atau 'pasaran'. Tapi yang membuat novel ini beda dengan novel melankolis lainnya adalah: novel ini begitu filosofis dan diceritakan dengan epic. Apalagi, tokoh-tokohnya para remaja.Bahasa yang digunakan, secara 'sastra', juga lebih indah daripada novel-novel 'semacam ini' pada umumnya. 

Kisahnya juga mengharukan, tanpa happy ending maupun sad ending yang klise. Pokoknya, novel ini merupakan sesuatu yang fresh dan memberi hikmah pada waktu yang sama.
Highly recommended!

"I liked the witty narration so much and wanted others to get a feel for it, and for Hazel’s character. Augustus is equally appealing, clever and funny. For me this was (obviously) a strength of the novel, but also (perhaps less obviously) a weakness, because there were times when Hazel and Augustus sounded smarter and more erudite than any sixteen year old I’ve ever met.

Not only that but even the side characters sometimes shared this preternatural cleverness. As much as I liked Hazel and Augustus, and found them charismatic, I also felt I could see the author’s hand behind these characters, and others in the novel. There was an artifice to this work, with its self-conscious ironies and its meta references to cancer books, as well as its novel-within-a-novel." (review from DearAuthor)