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This is a reactionary note — an unhealthy long kneejerk one — about the book The Fault in Our Stars; and definitely not a review. I just wrote this note as a reaction to some reviews I came across on Goodreads and the online mood around creative works in general.

I try not to reveal any plot details except for an excerpt. But, if you bear with me throughout this note, I should warn you that it may touch on some emotional aspects of the book that might affect your reading experience.

I won't rehearse the obvious. It's a story about teens with cancer, people die in it, and yes, you will most likely cry. But, is it merely "a book that makes you cry" — the very remark that I'm reacting to? Is it just sentimental, and, as sentimentality by itself is abundant and unoriginal, particularly in many narrative works, does that mean it is not worth reading? I'd say no, since there is a lot to it. Just to state my position upfront, I see it as a "romantic and poetic cancer drama" (more on this later). I'm trying to carve out the sentimentalism and melodramatic elements so we can judge what remains.

Firstly, we can agree on the fact that the story moves most readers. The substance behind it is what justifies whether it is merely sentimentalism or something worth telling. The reason couldn't be simply pity. The author through the main characters gives us a glimpse into life with the disease. We are moved by their courage and the quiet toughness required day to day and their perspective when facing death. The book makes us feel the constant, looming sense of loss, the scars it leaves, and the inevitability of mortality — realities that healthy people can only understand from far away. The group consistently rejects pity, special treatment, and being defined solely by their illness. Throughout the story, we get a modest but powerful sense of what it means to be close to cancer. Cancer, like any dense mass, bends everything around it.

For this very reason, I trusted the author that this book, like "An Imperial Affliction", is not like any other "cancer book". It would be contradictory to accuse the author of soliciting pity when the narrative repeatedly refuses that emotion. Considering its theme, I believe the book is as unnecessarily melodramatic as Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (spoiler alert: it's not).

Secondly, one might argue that the characters' conversational tone and dialogue sometimes sound poetic and implausible for sixteen or seventeen year-olds — this may be even more pronounced for newer generations — and become rarely borderline cheesy. I grant that. Yet their voices, though similarly poetic, are distinct in character. One is brutally honest, earthy, and nihilistic; the other is hopeful, divine, and idealistic. The shared witty and quotable language in their remarks — however sometimes clichéd nearly as much as "Encouragements" — serves as the thread binding them together; without this common idiom, the pairing would feel unbalanced. Were it not for the substance behind these exchanges, such remarks would become unbearable, I agree.

What remains at the core is a kind of romantic poetry with death very close at hand. That's the core: the substance behind the poetic language that the author passionately wants to convey. That, to me, is original, beautiful, and genuinely affecting. I read the book as poetic in the way Kiarostami's films are poetic: grounded, realistic settings that serve as a canvas for expression. I have always admired the works that result when the creator could not bear the emotions or thought alone and bursts into an artistic expression. The author's passion and anger can be felt in word by word in this book. For me, that is more believable than fantastical escapes, than a boy whipping around a wand shouting spells to blast other wizards off the ground or a girl telekinetically moving objects with her palm. If the subject matter is grounded in reality, it does not mean that it cannot branch out to reach toward a kind of romantic transcendence. Toward the end, the plot occasionally stretches thin and slips into cliché, but those moments are relatively negligible.

I must admit, I've only recently found some joy in reading English-language poetry. One difference I notice compared with Persian verse is that English poets often make the ordinary feel original through personal perspective; the subject can be as mundane as fridge or bedroom, yet the voice makes it fresh. In this book the subject is anything but mundane — young love amid illness is a familiar theme, perhaps, but the particular setting and treatment that does not revolve solely on illness here felt new to me.

Finally, whether a work seems original or merely sentimental depends heavily on the reader's literary background. A less seasoned reader, like me, may be moved to tears and find a book beautiful; a well-read one or someone who has experienced it (here, cancer) firsthand may regard the same book as "a book that only makes you cry". Such a response rooted in this perspective is also valid, but we cannot dismiss an idea simply because it reminds us of death.