Review: The Fault in Our Stars

This book is a combination of girl-porn and death-porn. Porn as in there is literally sex, and porn as in reddits' use of the term of describe "earthporn" or "cityporn". It is girl porn in the Notebook sense- two people who love each other because they meet each other and even though they're not perfectly, they're perfectly perfect. Blah blah blah love exists.

But that isn't where the book shines. The book is straight up death-porn. Remember when Harry Potter is contemplating his death in book 7? Or in Too Far From Home when the astronaut off-station is described as dying because he can't get back? Those are little half-a-dozen page long descriptions of somebody dying or preparing to die. They're both really fun reads. Death porn isn't gore or watching other people die, it is the Oculus-Rifting of death. You are the one dying.

And holy shit, is this book not from beginning to end, death porn. Now, it doesn't need to glorify death or cancer to do this. In fact, Green is extremely anti-romanticization. Death in the book is /never/ accepted. Death is bad. People who say "they're in a better place" are treated like the innocent, well-meant but wrong people that they are.

Dylan Thomas wrote his poem, Do not go gentle into that good night, ending with the lines,

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The goodness of AFIOS is that it captures that mantra in a format that is edible for teenage girls.