The Fault in Our Stars

Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Crown 2012. Print.

First Sentences:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.

Description:

As a cancer combatant, I retain a fascination for cancer-themed books, both fiction and non-fiction. To me, it always seems interesting to read how an author/character depicts the thoughts and actions of someone experiencing the fears, hopes, and broken dreams that accompany cancer.

In John Green's The Fault in Our Stars I found three teenage characters living typical teenager lives while coping with various stages and types of cancer. Having met in a dull support group meeting, Augustus, Hazel, and Isaac bond over video games, jokes, conversation, loves, and one particular book, An Imperial Affliction  with it's esoteric philosophy about suffering that speaks to them. 

Normal kids, right? But each has challenges to address. Hazel uses a portable oxygen machine to keep her cancer-ruined lungs working; Gus has lost a leg to the disease; and Isaac has only one weak eye which will soon be removed due to cancer. But they persevere by testing out their new relationships with each other, family, and friends; embarking on adventures; and always seeking to somehow contact Peter Van Houten, the reclusive Dutch author of their favorite book.

For Hazel, the romantic attention of Gus is a first and she is cautious, but happy. For Isaac, Gus is a great supporter and fellow video-gamer, and for Gus ...well, who knows what the ex-basketball star gets out of these relationships besides fellowship with fellow cancer travelers.

But this description belies a truly great book. The dialogue is snappy and clever, the disdain they have for anyone who condescends to their illness is realistic, and the strong bonds they form make them seem like young people you wished you really could meet just so you could sit around and talk with them as ordinary people, not merely sick kids.

There it is: a simple story about complex, real characters who are living life of ordinary kids, but who happen to have a fatal disease that will take their lives someday. Hazel describes herself as a "grenade" who will destroy someone someday if she gets too close, But that does not stop her friends nor prevent them from seeking adventure and confidence as they interact with the non-sick world.

To me, it is an honest portrayal of what those of us who have experienced cancer go through and think about, both positive and negative. It's a rare book that combines personal reflections as well as physical actions of its characters on 

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Weir, Andy. Looking for Alaska  

Four friends at a private boarding school discuss life, scheme pranks to pull, consider their lives, and in general reveal what is occurring inside a teenager's head. Excellent (previously reviewed here)

HItchens, Christopher. Mortality  

The famous columnist Hitchens contracts cancer and records his progress in the journey to address the disease. His thoughts about entering the "country of the well" to the "land of malady" are clever, defiant, heart-breaking, and honest. (previously reviewed here) 

Wondering Who You Are

Lea, Sonya. Wondering Who You Are. Portland, Oregon: Tin House Books. 2015. Print.

First Sentences:

The night before my husband's cancer surgery, I stay up to watch him sleep... 

We have been married  for twenty-three years. I have been a child and a woman with this man. To imagine his death is to imagine the end of myself: I cannot know this loss.

Description:

In Sonya Lea's highly personal and moving memoir, Wondering Who You Are, the author's husband, Richard, emerges from a successful operation for his appendix cancer, but now has as no memory of who he is, who his wife is, or anything else about his past. He can recognize some faces, recall certain facts, but recalls nothing about "the working narrative of one's life, one's autobiography." His short term working memory and his ability to retain information is completely gone.

Richard has lost his memories of some things -- out marriage history, major events in the children's lives -- but not others: Hamlet's soliloquy and the Superman monologue.

Thus begins the journey of Sonya to reclaim her husband and their lives, along with the questions raised regarding the medical profession. She explores every avenue to understand and possibly restore Richard's memory, from medical to spiritual to supernatural. Throughout the months after the "anoxic insult" (brain injury), they relocate to new states, take on new roles, and learn insights into each other. 

Through it all their relationship is always the center of every action. She is forced to reassess their 20+ years of marriage, who she was in that relationship, her challenges with drinking, her anger, and what their new life might be should Richard recovery his ability to remember the past. She (and Richard) find they must reassess their own personal lives and how to move on in their relationship, alone or together. But will they be able to (or want to) resume their previous lives or be forced to start over and form new memories?

Life after cancer eats what isn't true, our outworn notions, the ideas we hold on to because we want to do life "right," which mostly means what other people want us to do. But the body doesn't die. The body changes form, goes on to be dust of food or firmaments. That personality, though, that story we grow attached to: dead, dead, dead.  

This is tragic memoir of a medical error and the repercussions suffered by two people. But it is also a truly honest love story, where a couple faces tremendous challenges to their identities as separate individuals and also as two people joined in marriage. Religion, professional work, parenting, ambitions, and even everyday conversations present new problems that must be dealt with, often in surprising ways.

How can they live with each other? How can Sonya ever accept Richard's new personality? And, depending on Richard's health, what does the future hold for them together or apart?

Patients [of brain injury] do not "recover" in the sense of returning to their previous lives. Many of Richard's deficits were likely to remain, and my work would be in accepting him as he is.

While this memoir may sound overwhelmingly depressing, it actually is a moving account of the strengths and weaknesses of people facing awful situations that force them to into uncomfortable decisions. The strength of Sonya and the determination of Richard are inspiring. The book forces readers to ask, "What would I have done if faced with these challenges? Could I attack the problems as Richard and Sonya do, or would I simply collapse in frustration and hopelessness?" 

These are ordinary people in extraordinarily heartless conditions. How they address their changing lives is endlessly absorbing.

Happy reading. 


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Watson, S.J., Before I Go to Sleep

A woman wakes one morning with no memory of where she is or even who she is. There is a greying man snoring in bed beside her who she doesn't recognize. She can function during the day, but awakes each morning with no memory. Who can she trust to tell her who she really is and who is working against her? (previously reviewed here) 

Special Post - Dealing With Cancer

Highly recommended books that discuss personal and professional aspects of cancer from writers including Christopher Hitchens, John Diamond, Will Schwalbe, Susan Halpern, and Siddhartha Mukharjee. (previously reviewed here)

Special Post - Dealing with Cancer

Dealing with cancer is a frightening challenge, whether you have contracted this disease yourself or if you know friends or family who are afflicted. As a cancer combatant myself (now seven years in remission), I have found the books below to be helpful in understanding and dealing with cancer, the doctors, nurses, and medical procedures, and other experiences faced during the patient's fight for survival. 

There is some comfort in this understanding. I wish you well on your journey.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis - John Diamond

First Sentences  

In the face of such overwhelming statistical possibilities, hypochondria has always seemed to me to be the only rational position to take in life. 

Consider, by the time you hit 40, your tattered heart has already thumped out a billion and a half beats; what can the chances be of any organ doing anything a billion and a half times and never making a mistake? 

Description:

Already in the first sentences, journalist Diamond shows his self-deprecating wit, intelligence, and sardonic nature, setting the tone for the book. After his throat cancer diagnosis, Diamond decided to share his encounters with the medical world and his personal relationships in his internationally-circulated column. Diamond talks about the confusion of treatment, dealing with good/bad/indifferent doctors, reassuring friends, and recognizing himself as just another patient rather than a hero for his battles. 

Witty, smart, penetrating, and insightful, this opening of the real world of the cancer experience, from humorous to fearful, is not to be missed. 

I wasn't doing this [writing] for the greater good of cancer patients everywhere....I was doing it as a form of very public denial therapy....I was trying to change the problem from one of pain and physical constraint and possibly impending death into one of best journalistic practise....unconscious of the times when I was putting a jaunty spin on something depressing, of the times when I was feigning bravery or indifference.

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Mortality - Christopher Hitchens

First Sentences  

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. 

But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. 

Description:

In 2010, internationally famous social critic and journalist Hitchens contracted esophageal cancer and was dead in eighteen months. During that time of illness, he continued to write articles for Vanity Fair (collected into this book) about his illness, his thoughts of treatment, his changing outlook on the world, and death. An avowed atheist, he adamantly refused to change his religious feelings despite his pain and fatal prognosis. Highly intelligent, deeply philosophical, and always personal, Mortality is a serious, honest, and deeply-felt memoir of one thoughtful, intelligent man's cancer experience.  

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End of Your Life Book Club - Will Schwalbe

First Sentences  

We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering's outpatient care center.

Description:

While sitting in hospital waiting rooms killing time before cancer treatments for his mother, Mary Anne, author Will Schwalbe and she talk about books they have read. They form a book club of sorts, with only themselves as members, discussing agreed-upon titles and recollecting their past lives together and apart. Their relationship strengthens with each week and book. A very moving memoir of two intelligent, sympathetic, funny people. As a bonus, their discussions reveal plenty of great book titles to pursue.

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The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can't Find the Words - Susan Halpern

First Sentences  

I stand with my hand on the receiver.

I want to call my friend who has just been diagnosed with lupus, but my mind has reverted to that of a seven-year-old, and an inner tape plays, "What am I going to say? How am I going to say it?

. 

Description:

When someone close to you contracts cancer, it is often difficult to know the best tone to use to interact with that person. Friendly? Joking? Serious? Inquiring? The Etiquette of Illness is a straightforward guide to dealing with every sort of encounter and uncertainty you might face. Author Halpern, a counselor to friends and family of cancer patients, shares her insights and recommendations, drawing on what patients have told her about what encourages successful communication with friends and what pitfalls to avoid.

A highly valuable tool that you will refer to often when uncertain of how best to communicate with the people you love and want to help in their struggle with cancer.

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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee

First Sentences  

On the morning of May 19, 2004, Karla Reid, a thirty-year-old kindergarten teacher from Ipswich, Massachusetts, a mother of three young children, woke up in bed with a headache.

        

Description:

Extremely thorough history of cancer, from its first appearance in ancient Egypt writings to modern discoveries. Mukherjee documents cases and treatments ranging from early primitive attempts to understand and remove cancers to current drug cocktails and focused genetic treatments. A very readable, fascinating, and learned compilation of the history, people, and medical fights against all forms of cancer.  

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When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

First Sentences  

I flipped through the CT scan images, the diagnosis obvious: the lungs were matted with innumerable tumors, the spine deformed, a full lobe of the liver obliterated. Cancer, widely disseminated....But this scan was different: it was my own.

          

Description:

Author Paul Kalanithi is a budding superstar in neurosurgery. But while finishing his last year of residency, he contracts lung cancer. In this memoir, he carefully documents his rise in the medical profession, his interest in the brain, his cancer self-diagnosis, and his life as a patient in the same hospital where he operated on others with cancer. A riveting account, very intelligently written, conveying his passion and drive during his medical training and then his battle with cancer.  

Severe illness wasn't life-altering. It was life-shattering. It felt less like an epiphany -- a piercing burst of light, illuminating What Really Matters -- and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward....

[The] cancer diagnosis was like a nutcracker, getting us back into the soft, nourishing meat of our marriage. We hung on to each other for [my] physical survival and our emotional survival, our love stripped bare. We each joked to close friends that the secret to saving a relationship is for one person to become terminally ill. Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love --- to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful.

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Alice and Oliver - Charles Bock

First Sentences 

There she was, Alice Culvert, a little taller than most, her figure fuller than she would have liked.

This brisk morning, the fourth Wednesday of November, Alice was making her way down West Thirteenth. Her infant was strapped to her chest; her backpack was overloaded and pulling at her shoulders. The Buddhist skull beads around her wrist kept a rattling time.

Description:

In this novel Alice and Oliver are a young couple with an infant daughter. When Alice discovers she had leukemia and must be hospitalized, the book reveals the trials and fears experienced by the couple, their family, and their friends. Taking place in the early 1990s, the treatments of pills, ports, radiation, stem cell transplant, and diet are more frightening and difficult than those I experienced. But her uncertainties and her drive to fight the disease and overcome the obstacles are familiar to anyone who has been through such a battle whether personally or with friends or family. 

Sensitively written, Alice and Oliver also reveal challenges faced to their relationship, their coping mechanisms, and their struggles to find the strength and will to carry on. Extremely moving and thorough in its revelations about the personal and medical world of cancer treatment.

Inside the house that was her body, it was as if she were walking out of every room and turning off the lights behind her, one by one...

"So easy to be positive when you aren't feeling horrendous," Alice whispered. "The pain melts all of it...." 

This is what people go through. Now is my turn. 

Special Post - Short Reviews #2

Sometimes I read books that are delightful but I just don't have time to write a full review for each. So, behold. Here are ten short reviews of particularly noteworthy titles. These are true gems, well worth your time for their unique characters, quality writing, and unexpected stories.

Happy reading.

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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The Enchanted - Rene Denfeld

First Sentences:

This is an enchanted place. Others don't see it but I do

I see every cinder block, every hallway and doorway. I see the doorways that lead to the secret stairs and the stairs that take you into stone towers and the towers that take you to windows and the windows that open to wide, clear air. I see the chamber where the cloudy medical vines snake across the floor, empty and waiting for the warden's finger to press the red buttons. I see the secret basement warrens where rusted cans hide the urns of the dead and the urns spill their ashes across the floor untiled floods come off the river to wash the ashed outside to feed the soil under the grasses, which wave to the sky. 

Description:

What at first sounds like a castle of fairy tales in these first sentences soon takes on an ominous air with the realization that the "enchanted place" is a prison where the author writes from his death row cell. This is a fictionalized tale of the lives of people who have no names and are without hope, punished for their actions. Yet for the narrator, there may be a possible future through a woman and a priest who work with these men and have their cases re-examined and possibly change their sentencing. But not every prisoner, as we find out, wants to stay his execution.

Beautifully written, compelling, and shocking, the book still offers hope and love despite the darkness.

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The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price, Purveyor of Superior Funerals  - Wendy Jones

First Sentences:

It was because of a yellow dress.

She was wearing a yellow dress and her arms were bare. It was slightly tart, the colour of lemon curd. He couldn't remember seeing a dress in that shade before.



Description:

On a whim, Wilfred Price, the mortician/narrator of this 1924 tale, proposes to the woman who is wearing the yellow dress, thus making a binding promise that he almost immediately regrets. He must think of how to break this promise of marriage to her and especially to the girl's stern father. It doesn't help that he also meets another girl who he feels real attraction to. And one of them turns up pregnant. A story of customs, social norms, love, honor, and duty ... all wonderfully wrapped together to present a picture of life in the early 1920s by ordinary people trying to do the right thing and yet searching for someone to be with forever.

A must read. This is a keeper for all lovers and readers, for people who understand what it means to love "like its possible to love when your heart hasn't been broken."

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Doc: A Novel  -  Mary Doria Russell

First Sentences:

He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. 

The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive, In all that time he was allowed a single season of something like happiness. 

Description:

Dr. John Henry (Doc) Holiday, a Southern aristocrat, moves to Texas for his health and opens one of the first dentistry offices in Dodge City. After becoming a gambler to survive when business is bad (always), he befriends Wyatt Earp in this rich, compelling historical fiction of the people and environment of the Old West. 

Highly recommended in every way for strong writing, historical details, and great characters.

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Down the Great Unknown:John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon - Edward Dolnick

First Sentences:

The first inhabitants of Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, gather at the riverfront to cheer off a rowdy bunch of adventurers...

Their plan could hardly be simpler. They will follow the Green River downstream until it merges with the Grand to become the Colorado, and then they will stay with the Colorado wherever it takes them

Description:

Here is a real life adventure. Ten men, including their one-armed leader, in 1869 set out in wooden boats to follow the Green River to the Colorado River and then row and float through the entire Grand Canyon. Uncharted and unseen water faces them, with rapids, cold, and starvation a daily trial. Hold-your-breath fascinating and gripping on every page. 

One of the best adventure books I have ever read.

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The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, a.k.a. Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer"  - Jim Steinmeyer

First Sentences:

All the World's a stage. 

Inscribed in the plaster and finished in gold leaf, those five famous words appeared over the proscenium at the World Green Empire in north London, in the smooth white halo that formed the focal point of the theater, and surrounded the blood red, gold-tassled curtain.

Description:

Here is probably one of the most fascinating (and true) accounts of the world of magic, revealing the life of William Robinson, an ordinary magician in the early 1900s who tries to find a gimmick to make his performances stand out. He hits on the idea of pretending to be a silent Chinese conjurer, Chung Ling Soo. In his foreign make-up and Asian robes, Robinson works astonishing magic he has designed himself to audiences who soon become fascinated by his mysterious nature as much as his tricks, including catching bullets fired from a gun. 

The book shows the inner working of his illusions, his constant dedication to his craft, and the imagination and technical skill behind each performance. It is a great book that provides a peek into the world of magic, illusion, and performance.

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In Search of Moby Dick: The Quest for the White Whale - Tim Severin

First Sentences:

The Essex was not going to founder immediately. That soon became clear to the men of the three whaleboats. 

Description:

Did the Great White Whale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick actually exist? Author Severin travels the world to record fascinating stories and eye-witness accounts of white whales and their behavior in today's world and in past history, leading credence to the idea that Moby Dick actually existed and was just as ornery as Melville portrayed him. 

I really loved this book, the riveting accounts from eye-witnesses, and the travel to exotic locations around the world that have reported sightings of a white whale. One of the side stories involve native tribesmen who jump from small boats onto the backs of giant manta rays to ride them upright until they can harpoon them, just as they did with whales many years ago, including, they say, one white one.

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Mammoth - John Varley

First Sentences:

The helicopter flew low over the landscape as barren as any to be found on planet Earth.

This was Nunavut. It wasn't a province and hardly a territory though they called it that. As far a Warburton was concerned they could give it all back to the Eskimos. 

Description:

When examining a rare find of a Mammoth elephant in the ice fields of Canada, a carefully-preserved man in animal skins is also found next to the animal's body. This is an astonishingly historic find. But there is something else. Strapped to the ancient man's wrist is a gleaming stainless steel briefcase, not exactly something a cave man would have in prehistoric times. 

A lovely, clever page-turner of a novel.

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Mortality  - Christopher Hitchens

First Sentences:

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death 

But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying. cement.

Description:

Christopher Hitchens is a remarkably clever, intellectual, and funny writer. In Mortality, he details his battle with esophageal cancer and his entrance into the "land of malady." While a depressing topic, Hitchens retains his caustic wit and piercing observations, beautifully writing about his own sickness, fears, treatment, friends, and life facing this disease.

As a cancer combatant, this book resonates with me as few other do on this topic. 

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My Mercedes is Not for Sale: From Amsterdam to Ouagadougou...An Auto-Misadventure Across the Sahara  -  Jeroen Van Bergeijk

First Sentences: 

Stuck to the cracked dashboard was a decal of the Dutch soccer team PVS Eindhoven.

A PVS Eindhoven fan in Ouagadougou? I tapped on the team's red and white logo and asked the driver if he was an admirer of Dutch soccer. He had no idea what I was talking about. He'd never heard of PVS, didn't give a damn about soccer. He didn't even know where the Netherlands was.

Description:

The delightful, witty true adventures of the author who hits on a scheme to sell a very old Mercedes automobile to people in a Third World country where these cars are wildly in demand. The only catch is that to make any profit at all, he has to drive the wreck himself to the destination; that is, from his home in The Netherlands to Africa, including a section across the Sahara desert. 

Desert, people, travel, and culture come into contact in adventurous and humorous situations, revealing aspects of each at their best (and worst). 

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Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death - Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

First Sentences:

Rebecca Love met Tommy Odom ten years ago at a Renaissance fair. 

She had her booth selling clay sculptures of women's bodies; he ran the fool's maze.

Description:

Different cultures and people choose a wide variety of ways to deal with the bodies of loved ones claimed by death. The author explores these many methods with quiet fascination and respect, no matter how unusual the practices are. She talks with the people who offer these services and learns that bodies can be: 1) cremated and dropped from a crop-dusting plane; 2) mixed with cement that is shaped into a sculpture and tossed into the ocean as a habitat for fish; 3) buried in a natural cemetery without coffin or embalming; 4) turned into diamonds using the carbon found in their ashes. Of course, there are examples of even more exotic after-death options that she explores.  

Fascinating, thought-provoking, and most of all, strangely fun.