Favorite Books of 2013: Martha McQuade

**Spoiler Alert! Some important details are revealed below.

I’ve been trying to choose my favorite book of 2013 and I’m just not very good at picking a favorite anything. So much pressure! I loved The Flamethrowers (one of Brian’s picks), The Goldfinch, and Dear Life : Stories, but to be honest I finally settled on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green because it was the last book I read in 2013. And the thing is that it is not the type of book I would normally read, mostly because it was on all the #1 book lists last year. When I read books or see movies or listen to albums that make those lists I’m usually left feeling like there is something wrong with me because I don’t connect with them. I heard a review of this book on NPR one day though and the description of the two main characters grabbed my interest.

The Fault in Our Stars is a young adult book narrated by Hazel, a 16 year old girl with terminal cancer. She is intelligent and witty in a very adult, cynical way. The story is essentially about her relationship with Augustus, a 17 year old boy who also has cancer and is also witty and intelligent. The two teenagers meet in a cancer support group which they attend skeptically and bond over making fun of the Support Group culture. Hazel shares her favorite book with Augustus, about a girl who also has cancer and which has an abrupt, unsatisfying ending. The book also resonates with Augustus and they end up traveling to Amsterdam to meet the reclusive author to try to find out the ending of the book and in the process fall in love.

The book is sad but that’s almost an aside. Hazel and Augustus are extremely interesting characters, smart and quirky and exactly the type of friends I was looking for when I was a teenager. I think this is one of the reasons I liked the book so much. Their relationship isn’t so much about doing things but talking and thinking about things. I feel like at this age I had so many similar conversations in my head because I couldn’t find someone who could relate in the same way. I had so many thoughts that I considered to be wrong to voice and it was lonely thinking that there was no one out there who could relate. John Green gives dialogue to Hazel and Augustus that gets right to the point in a way that is brutally honest but also extremely funny, and a little sad too.

“The thing about dead people,” he said, and then stopped himself. “The thing is you sound like a bastard if you don’t romanticize them, but the truth is…complicated, I guess. Like, you are familiar with the trope of the stoic and determined cancer victim who heroically fights her cancer with inhuman strength and never complains or stops smiling even at the very end, etcetera?”

“Indeed,” I said. “They are kindhearted and generous souls whose every breath is an Inspiration to Us All. They’re so strong! We admire them so!”

Hazel and Augustus fall in love but maybe because they have had to grow up so fast and know that their time is short, their understanding of it is sophisticated. Towards the end of the book Hazel talks to a friend about being in love with Augustus:

“So what was it like?” she asked.
“Having your boyfriend die? Um, it sucks.”
“No,” she said. “Being in love.”
“Oh, I said. “Oh. It was…it was nice to spend time with someone so interesting. We were very different, and we disagreed about a lot of things, but he was always so interesting, you know?”

Such an insightful but also simple way of thinking about love and connection to someone. Since finishing the book I keep coming back to this sentence and I know it will have a deep impact on how I consider both existing and new relationships in the new year.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thank you, Martha. You can visit Martha at her website, MWM.