“Do you have a wish?” He asked, referring to this organization, The Genie Foundation, which is in the business of granting sick kids one wish. This book and the author become the centerpiece of the novel when Augustus manages to contact Van Houten and use his “The Genie Foundation” Wish to bring Hazel to Amsterdam to meet him. Hazel’s speech from above comes from a book she is obsessed with, a book that Augustus becomes obsessed with when she insists he read it, called An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. There was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be a time after. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this” - I gestured encompassingly - “will have been for naught. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. “There will come a time,” I said,” when all of us are dead. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. “I fear it like the proverbial blind man who is afraid of the dark.” “I fear oblivion,” he said without a moment’s pause. One of the most stunning parts of the book is when Hazel Grace first meets Augustus and he says he is afraid of Oblivion: The two become bonded first by friendship and then love as they try to battle with an adolescence of fear, sickness, and difference. He is a healthy, mouthy, lovely boy who is a sort of inspiration to Hazel.
Augustus Waters is in remission from osteosarcoma which took his right leg but not his spirit. When we meet Hazel she is in remission from thyroid cancer but the affects of this cancer are a permanent part of her life she has trouble breathing, walking or standing for too long a period, and must carry an air tank around with her. The story is about two teenagers, Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters, who are both struggling with cancer. Once I picked it up it was hard to put it down and the next 27 hours were devoted to trying to get in a page or a chapter whenever I could. It is a short read and I say that being a slow reader. When I finished the book a weird sort of peace had encompassed me and for a moment I was content. It’s brilliantly written, amusing, heartbreaking, and you leave it looking at the world with new eyes. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is a young adult novel that I strongly suggest everyone read at least once.
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