To me, The Fault in Our Stars was a reconstruction to deconstruction of Paper Towns. Of course, I'm talking about the strange phenomena of Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Now the MPDG in Young Adult literature has been around since there has been young adult novel to begin with, but the modern incarnation might have been from a little 2000 book called Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, where eponymous girl named Stargirl moves into a sleepy Arizonan town and meeting a boy named Leo. There, Stargirl with her peculiar charm goes through an misguided adventure of charm, wit and self-realization. And of course, 2007 sequel follow-up with the adventure of this peculiar girl. Now when I read Stargirl and Paper Towns, I have noticed the similarity of two premise presented in the cover. But Paper Town veers very right into John Green's direction of leaving the girl in that inevitable teenage angst and therefore giving her creditably as a genuine being. In fact all of John Green and his friends (Scott Westerfield, Maureen Johnson, David Levithan...) puts a screw around the premise of MPDG by brainwashing her, or making her gay and what not. But rather than just killing the person, John Green instead gives the realization of a girl who found her MPDG powers. Her name is Hazel and along with Augustus, Hazel's love interest, they go through the peculiarities of being a cancer survivor and going Amsterdam to visit an author to reveal his secrets of the next novel before someone dies and stuff. To me, the Amsterdam stuff and its fallout, which makes the bulk of the story, focus not on the cancer but the writer questions to which those question might be posed onto him. To this, I say that there's that limit to influence on Esther, just because if it were based on her it'll be completely different story. As always, the quotablity of the book enhances with wit gives the novelist kind of charm and marketability that author needs. I just realized that I'm starting putting many words with ability at the end, but that's what's it about. New found ability of a girl, who thought they can't do much better. On a different subject, one of the thoughts of many people on the approach to release was the cover, which was done beautifully but some have rejected. The cover of the clear sky with cloud (though one black) gives much more optimism to the book that might be the saddest compared to Looking for Alaska, which the smoke reminds of death, as in my culture you smoke a... thing to commemorate the dead, Paper town which was supposed to be ambiguous and Abundance of Katherines which was just... bad. The cover gives the optimism as it gives a happier ending rather than a unknown one. Hazel realizes her potential and moves on to good in this world, the author gets hope in humanity again and Augustus... never mind. Let's just say that it's clearer than Pudge moving on but where? and Paper towns in which Margo is just left alone with not much resolution. As for the recommendation, I say the book is for those who are looking to venture into Young Adult novels and thinking 'what should I read?' This is it.
(If I came off headstrong in this review, I'm sorry and I do not condemn any of the books mentioned and you should read all of it) And for another thing, the Amsterdam scenes had that 13 blue envelops feeling to it and cover itself has similar shade of blue in the background, I wonder Green had some inspiration to it...
