The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I've just finished this novel, and I have so many contradictory and perhaps "sharp" or critical (as in finding fault) things to say about this book - which I basically enjoyed and would recommend.

The first thing I have to say is that I am sad.  I probably didn't cry as much as some readers, but I imagine that was because I was in a public place about 75% of the time I was reading the book.  I would guess that not crying did not help me to be less sad.  There were certain sentences in the book that immediately made me want to cry.

I found myself feeling uncomfortable with the unbearable pain of losing a young person to cancer being transformed into an entertainment.  Eventually, I realized that I had my own experience with this phenomenon, and perhaps my critical attitude had to do in part with how much I minded having my faded pain unearthed and freshened.

There is something weird about how we respond to the death of young people.  I noticed it when I was in high school and the president of the senior class killed himself.  Someone said, breathlessly, "I sat at his lunch table," as if physical proximity to someone who died not that long after was in some way significant.  I think I thought at the time that there was something callous and insincere about this reaction and perhaps it was only that it was wonder and stupefaction rather than real grief.  Death is so other; so strange and unlike our other experiences.

The book begins with an odd disclaimer.  Green reminds the reader that the book is a work of fiction and that too much and nothing literal/real/thinly veiled should be read into it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago:  This book is a work of fiction.  I made it up.  

  Neither novels nor their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story.  Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.  

  I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

After the book concludes, there is a acknowledgemwnt of many people that includes the family of Esther Earl, the young woman to whom the book is dedicated, and who has presumably died of cancer.

As you can see from the very fact I mentioned this, I really did not "get it."  To me, it's patently obvious that readers may be passionately interested in the facts that lie inside a story and that academic criticism holds that those increase our understanding and appreciation of the story.  This is the first book I've read by John Green and I find myself wondering if all of his books are written in this style, which I see as a highly entertaining mashup of low colloquialisms and high diction.  I usually love that kind of stuff, and it's a very big part of why I enjoyed this book and why I recommend it.  But the whole thing about the author's note makes me nervous.

The flavor of the novel first appears in the second paragraph:

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer.  But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

The book goes in for a lot of criticism of the empty comfort that is offered to cancer patients (the support group leader who soberly intones, "We are literally in the heart of Jesus," while that cannot be true).  And there is a great deal of discussion of the search for meaning for dying people who do not believe in heaven or are not sure that they believe in heaven.

Hazel is a sixteen year-old cancer patient; at her mother's insistence, she very reluctantly attends a cancer support group meeting.  While there, she meets someone new, a young man who has had "a touch" of osteocarcinoma.
She is intrigued by him, and he is also very impressed by her.  They grow close in painful and sometimes absurd circumstances.

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

I like Fannie Flagg.  She's fun.  I enjoyed her book Redbird Christmas, although I think that this book has much more to offer.  Flagg is also the author of Fried Green Tomatoes and the Whistlestop Cafe (if I've got the title right), which, like this novel, affirms women's strength and relationships.

I really enjoyed The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion.  The things I liked about it were the fact that some complex issues were presented intelligently, although it was overall an optimistic, upbeat, life-affirming novel.  I also think that most readers will find it a light read, and one that is not too challenging.

It was also very much a book about women.  The protagonist, Sookie, has to find herself after her identity is shattered, as she sees it, when she learns that she is adopted.  It's also a book about women's achievement, which is shown as being very important.  (It is important, but I secretly wish that someone would say that making the meals and doing the laundry is very important, too.)

When the novel opens, Sookie has just married off her last daughter.  She's mentally breathing a sign of relief as she considers what she'll be able to do with her free time - including reading!  Her time isn't entirely her own, however, as she spends a good bit of time looking after her octogenarian mother.  Her mother is a bit of a handful.  That's putting it tactfully.  Her mother is demanding, interfering, embarrassing, and arguably a bit batty.

In the wake of a lawsuit against her mother for something like libel, Sookie has taken over paying her bills and handling her correspondence. That leads to the event that drives the plot.  ( I feel guilty about telling you too much.

In the second paragraph above, I said that I wished that someone would say that making the meals and doing the laundry is important, too.  I think that's part of what is so lovely about this novel.  I didn't realized until I'd thought about it some more, but Flagg is saying that making the meals and doing the laundry is important, and that all women's work is important and should not be devalued because it includes laundry!

Defending Jacob by William Landay

I'd been hearing that this was a good book and a kind of genre-crosser (a mix of family concerns and courtroom drama/legal thriller), and I finally got around to reading it last month.

I thought the praise was well-deserved.  This book reminded me very much of Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent, and it emphasized the family aspect more.  I've heard that it's a popular book club book, and I think the combination of real suspense and family concerns makes for a book that is likely to be enjoyed by many and will offer plenty to talk about.

Andy Barber is a prosecutor, a twenty-year veteran.  He and his wife are happily married and they have a teenage son named Jacob.

A classmate of his son's is killed in the park next to Jacob's school.  At first, Andy views the murder as routine and his first thought is to consider local pedophiles.  Things start to get a little strange when, after Jacob's classmates are interviewed by police and prosecutors, Andy's boss decides to take him off the case.

It shortly becomes clear why Andy has been removed from the case when Jacob is charged with the murder.

Andy enters a world of bifurcated perception as he sees every event through two lenses:  as a lawyer and prosecutor with a profound knowledge of the legal system's limitations and how to work them, and as a father who longs to protect his son.

Janet Maslin in the New York Times described Defending Jacob this way: "Mr. Landay turns out to be creating a clever blend of legal thriller and issue-oriented family implosion." Andy Barber's conflicted feelings about his predicament lead him to reevaluated his entire life. I enjoyed the "parry and thrust" of courtroom tactics, and I found the insider's view very interesting. I'd recommend it both as a suspenseful, entertaining read and as a good selection for a book group.