For some who have sat by their beloveds, TFIOS may be too hard to take. In watching (and reading about) Hazel’s mother (played with realism and guts by Laura Dern), I was reminded of how much courage is required to watch someone you love slowly ebb away. I’ve been through four episodes in my life when the cruelties of cancer eroded my loved ones. The movie is good/bad viewing for anyone who has lost someone to cancer (and possibly other decimating diseases).Ĭancer just absolutely sucks the scum at the bottom of the pond. Not me or Doyle, but what a great picture!ħ.
This tells me that it’s possible for almost anyone to cry at this movie. Everyone in the theater was sniffling, or at least “watery-eyed,” including my husband, who is a rugged, outdoorsy sort of man who wears flannel and longs to live off the land.“That,” he said, after the movie was over, and rows of red-eyed teenagers filed past us in weepy gaggles of misery, “was unmitigated brutality.” He then admitted to watery eyes. Could Green have told the story as well without The Gus Twist? It’s a fair question.Ħ. I’m all for plot twists, and telling stories close to the bone, but in the case of “My Sister’s Keeper,” it felt like I was the puppet and Picoult was the puppet master, jerking my emotions in a way that felt scheming. I felt it was manipulative to suggest, strongly, that one character would be dying, and then at the very end, to pull a fast one and kill off another character. When I read Jodi Picoult’s “My Sister’s Keeper,” I was boiling, stomping mad. But still, did he have to kill my beloved Gus first? When you think about all the things that compete for our attention, to be in the thrall of a writer’s gifts is truly, technically, amazing.ĥ. I thought about death, and life, and dying, and Heaven, and the exquisite beauty of young love. I thought about what they were going through and how I would have faced the same ordeals. Mostly, I just thought about Hazel and Gus, and Hazel’s mom, and Isaac, and Peter Van Houten all the time. I marveled at his scrumptious word choices and delectable phrases. I laughed out loud a bunch of times, and I cried out loud too, ugly, snotty, hiccup-y crying. But John Green’s writing does amaze me, at least in TFIOS. Yes, I have slipped into using “amazing” to describe all kinds of things (cheese, an episode of “Parenthood,” and a friend’s new haircut, for example) that have not technically amazed me. Now, I hate the word “amazing,” which ranks right up there with “impact” and “no worries” as the most overused words in our language. But I’m glad we could “go there” together and talk openly about important topics.
Do I wish he was a bit older when he read it? Yes. Still, he’s an old soul (he took an internet quiz and his real age is 37!), and the book led to some good conversations about love, death, the afterlife, and teen sexuality. I didn’t know there were some scenes and situations in the book that might make him uncomfortable. I bought TFIOS used, only having the vaguest impressions about it, that it was YA and about teenagers with cancer. Usually, I’m tuned in with what he’s reading and I often read along with him. My 13-year-old son read it first, and I wish he hadn’t. When it comes to character naming: no guts, no glory.ģ. (Okay, so I’m a name freak.) I honestly think these honest, real-as-flesh-and-blood characters would not have popped off the page so vividly had their names been plucked off the Top Ten list with no thought, no heart. Hazel Grace and Augustus are stellar character names
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