Gus, of course, refuses to accept defeat. The author, Peter Van Houten, is a recluse and never answers fan mail. But the ending’s left Hazel feeling unsettled, wondering, What happens to Anna’s mother? Her friends? What of the Tulip Man? Alas, there are no answers. Those with cancer know that better than most. As a literary device, it works: Life often ends inconveniently with so much undone. So she blurts out her love for the book An Imperial Affliction-a story about cancer that ends in mid-sentence when the narrator, Anna, either dies or grows too sick to write.
And when he asks to hear Hazel’s story, he doesn’t want to know about her cancer story, he wants to know about her personal one-what she loves and hates, what she hopes and fears. More importantly, he knows something about life and living. Gus knows something about cancer himself, having lost most of a leg to the disease not long ago. And while Hazel hates the group, she does meet Augustus there. Her parents think Hazel is depressed and send her to a cancer support group, hoping she’ll make some friends. Sometimes she sits and stares at the old, ratty swing set her father built for her in happier times, remembering what it was like to swing and slide and run. Her world has grown small, almost claustrophobic. She’s tethered to an oxygen tank, unable to last for more than a few seconds without it. Yes, Hazel is breathing, but weakly, painfully. And now, four years later, she’s still doing it.īut even miracles in this broken world aren’t always what we’d like them to be. She was put on an experimental drug that, to everyone’s surprise, worked.
Her parents and doctors watched helplessly as the girl-bald, bedridden, shackled by tubes-slipped slowly from them.Īnd then she rallied. It came when Hazel Grace was 13, as her young life was being devoured by cancer.
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