Book Club Guide

The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green · 2012 · Young Adult

Key themes

The full humanity of teenagers facing mortality
Love as a form of meaning-making under impossible conditions
What it means to matter — and to whom

About this book

Two teenagers with cancer fall in love; funny and heartbreaking without ever being saccharine.

Published in 2012, The Fault in Our Stars sold over 10 million copies and became one of the most important young adult novels of its era. Green drew on his experience as a student chaplain in a children's hospital.

Discussion questions

Hazel and Augustus are both highly articulate and self-aware about their own situation. Is this realism — how some teenagers actually are — or does it make them more readable at the cost of authenticity?
The novel's central metaphor is the 'okay' — a word that means vastly different things depending on its context. How does Green use language itself as a way of thinking about what can and cannot be said?
Peter Van Houten — the reclusive author at the centre of the novel — represents a certain kind of literary disappointment. What is Green saying through this character about what books can and can't offer?
The novel refuses to make dying ennobling or redemptive. How does this resistance to false comfort serve the story — and does it succeed?
The Fault in Our Stars was read by many teenagers going through difficult experiences. What responsibility does fiction have toward a young readership that may bring great personal need to a book?