A Girl's Reflections

An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten is a fictional book in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. It is Hazel Grace Lancaster, the narrator’s favorite book. An Imperial Affliction is about a girl named Anna who has a rare blood cancer.

I read The Fault in Our Stars over the weekend and loved it.

John Green’s novel about teenagers with Cancer had me laughing, yes laughing and crying. The characters are so real it is hard to believe the book is a work of fiction.

When my sister AKA Summer Child (@elsbro) suggested I read this book she warned it’s about Cancer kids and as much as she would like to read it, she cannot bear sadness in books. When the book had me laughing out loud for the fourth time, she took my Kindle from me to verify I was reading the right book.

The book is PERFECT! It is about young love, happiness and living with an illness, it is gut wrenching and heartbreaking good.

The main character Hazel Grace is a sixteen-year-old living with stage four thyroid cancer that has spread into her lungs. She lives life permanently attached to an oxygen tank via a cannula pondering death; she is a sad and a happy teenager. Her mother wants her to attend support group and make friends, her mother decides that Hazel is depressed and Hazel acknowledges that depression just as the cancer is a side effects of dying.

Hazel and the other kids (characters) living with cancer’s maturity reminds me a lot of most kids living with type 1 diabetes (old souls), her mother and the other parents also bring to mind parents of kids with type 1 diabetes.

These are some of my favourite quotes from The Fault in Our Stars –

(Artwork by Tyler Meows)

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart-broken by you.”

“Sometimes, 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 living humans read the book. And then there are book which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.”

― John Green The Fault in Our Stars

Here is the trailer for the book –

Link

 
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