I ordered Me Before You from Amazon.co.uk not just because I wanted to read a romantic novel with lots of tears and laughter, but as I work as a hospiI ordered Me Before You from Amazon.co.uk not just because I wanted to read a romantic novel with lots of tears and laughter, but as I work as a hospital chaplain and for a hospice, I wanted to see how Jojo Moyes handled the subject of caregiving. I was delighted she got it spot on and reminded those of us involved in patient care why do what we do. The novel brings out the great and wonderful mystery of caregiving, that whilst we are meeting the needs of the patient, the patient is actually doing something huge for us. That is true here. If Lou had never cared for Will, she never would have gained the opportunities for the great life that she will experience.
Me Before You also affected my views on ethical issues such as assisted suicide. Whilst it is never our role as caregivers to tell patients what to do with their lives, I thought that I personally had pretty deep-seated moral values before I read this book. Now I'm aware that these issues are not at all clear cut, and very much depend on the patient and situation.
Although she deals with very serious issues, Jojo Moyes has written a very amusing book. The scene where Will and Lou go to Will's ex-girlfriend's wedding is side-splittingly funny. Lou's insensitive and clueless boyfriend the triathlete is a wonderfully satiric portrait, and even the very minor characters such as Will's sister come through vividly. This book will make you laugh and it will make you weep, and it will make you think about it long after you finish it. ...more
The Fault in Our Stars is a sad, beautiful, and very moving story about the most romantic subjects in the world, young love and death. I first encountThe Fault in Our Stars is a sad, beautiful, and very moving story about the most romantic subjects in the world, young love and death. I first encountered this novel in a review in The Spectator, and it did not sound like the kind of book that the Speccie would take notice of. The narrator is a sixteen year-old girl named Hazel who lives in Indianapolis who has cancer with mets to the lungs, and she tells of her brief affair with another cancer patient, the seventeen year-old Gus, who dies of a recurrence of osterosarcoma. (Cancers with sarcoma in their name are fast and aggressive.) They meet at a support group for teen cancer patients and the attraction is instant, though their affair develops slowly.
John Green rather subtly introduces two important (and I very much believe true) insights. Apologists for atheism love to cite juvenile cancer as evidence that God doesn’t exist; why would a good God permit such an unnecessary disease to prey on innocent youngsters? (It’s all right that we old folks get cancer--it keeps us from burdening the welfare system any longer.) But atheists do believe in evolution and as both Hazel and the Dutch-American novelist van Houten observe at various moments, cancer is an inevitable by-product of evolution. The other insight, put into the mouth of a minor character, is that the universe likes to be observed. This notion sounds as if it derives from the philosopher Thomas Nagel (an atheist but a thoughtful one), who believes that consciousness is not a material function that just evolved in the human brain, but a necessary integral component of our universe. Not that there is any theology in this story: Hazel is mostly a sceptic and Gus vaguely believes in Something with an upper-case S.
I had feared that like too many bright teens in novels that Hazel would emerge as intolerable precious and pert but both her affection for Gus and her own vulnerability to the effects of the disease (she finds towing an O2 canister about with her an embarrassing nuisance) endeared her to me. Whilst Gus has some annoying affectations, particularly carrying an unlit cigarette about in his mouth wherever he goes and an addiction to violent video games and books featuring Sgt. Max Mayhem, he is generally an attractive character.
Their trip to Amsterdam to meet the novelist van Houten, who turns out to be a whisky-soaked burnt our case, and where the lovers’ relationship is finally consummated, reads a little too much like an article in a travel magazine, but we are delighted for the characters.
It was a good touch that we do not end with Gus's death, but have to endure a very inappropriate funeral and a period of mourning that remind us that for the survivors things continue to need being taken care of, however little consolation that is. This could have been both a sentimental and too cute story, but I think it hits just the right level of good romantic fiction.
I remember seeing Lucy a couple of times in downtown Iowa City and am sorry I never actually met her, although I very much doubt that she would have fI remember seeing Lucy a couple of times in downtown Iowa City and am sorry I never actually met her, although I very much doubt that she would have found anything of interest in me. Anne's memoir of their friendship haunted me when I read it last spring and Lucy still does. A number of readers have quite reasonably questioned how Ann could have endured a relationship with such a clingy narcissist as Lucy. I suspect that any of us who have ever had a relationship with a very exciting but very high maintenance person know part of the answer, that other less wearing but less demanding relationships just seem a bit dull in comparison....more
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