Music Journalism Practice

 The Fault in Our Stars – Sugar review

The Fault in Our Stars is the story of awkward, nerdy and terminally ill sixteen year old girl, Hazel Grace Lancaster, who after three years of living with cancer has been diagnosed with clinical depression and forced to join a support group. After several truly BORING meetings she turns to find a super-hot boy is staring right at her! (You know when a non-hot boy stares at you and it is, at best creepy and at worst a form of assault, but when a hot guy stares at you well…) Suddenly support group doesn’t seem so bad. Augustus has got everything going for him he’s charming, intelligent, and is all for comparing Hazel Grace to a mid-2000 and totally beautiful Natalie Portman; they seem like a match made in heaven. Could anything go wrong? This novel, by the talented John Green, is a hilarious and moving tale of love and suffering. John allows a huge insight into the lives of terminally ill teens, with characters so deep you feel like you are their best friend; he will push you to the brink of tears and have you chuckling at all the life like awkwardness that is being a teen. This book is un-put-down-able, and a total must read.

 

The Fault in Our Stars – The Times review

This book contains no sorcery, no vampires and no apocalypse, not unless heartbreak counts as the end of the world, for this reason the book will appeal to women of all ages and possibly a brave man who can embrace his feelings, even though it is aimed at a young adult audience. This is Printz-award winning author John Green’s story of lovers who aren’t so much star-crossed as star-cursed, it leans on literature’s most durable assets: finely wrought language, beautifully drawn characters and a distinctive voice. Hazel Lancaster’s lungs have been taken by cancer; she needs an oxygen tank to breathe. Augustus Water’s bones have been taken by cancer; he needs a prosthetic leg to walk. As the tale of their love begins you know that the end will be all kinds of awful, don’t think that you will not cry, because a canyon of tears will spring from your eyes. In this end point you will not be alone; after just one month of being published The Fault in Our Stars sold 150,000 copies, including e-books. Hazel, 16, who narrates the story, reports that she falls in love with Augustus, 17, “the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” As a character Hazel is wickedly blunt about her limitations, which include having “lungs that suck at being lungs.” She’s soulful and she’s a committed, fervent reader. In fact “The Fault in Our Stars” is in no small part about the power of literature itself. Hazel is obsessed with a novel, “An Imperial Affliction,” about a cancer patient much like her. And I’ve encountered no better description than hers of what books in general and one book in particular can mean to someone. “Sometimes,” she says, “you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all humans read the book. And then there are books like ‘An Imperial Affliction,’ which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal". For a ‘teen read’ The Fault in Our Stars wasn’t the worst book out there; personally I think that its only hamartia is that it ends.