Battle of the Teens with Cancer
Last month was an angelic teen bride with cancer; this month is foul-mouthed teens with cancer.
Hazel, who has thyroid cancer that has metastasized into lung cancer, meets Gus, a hottie who is in remission from osteosarcoma but has lost a leg. They are attending a support group for adolescents with the disease, bonding through their mutual friend Isaac, whose girlfriend broke up with him upon finding out he would be losing sight in his second eye, rendering him blind.
Somehow, love finds a way.
But not in a hearts-and-flowers sort of way; they are messy, awkward, and have some crazy interests that verge, self-admittedly, into full-on nerd-dom. They bond over sci-fi books, video games, and making fun of the support group in general.
When they trade favorite books to read and compare notes, Gus is annoyed that there is no definitive conclusion to Hazel's contribution, An Imperial Affliction. Hazel admits she wrote to ask the author, Peter Van Houten, questions, as she has been waiting for a sequel, wondering about the happily ever after.
Gus, in a grand gesture, tracks down Van Houten and initiates an email correspondence with him. He eventually replies, explaining that he can only answer Hazel's questions in person, and invites her to the Netherlands. Gus surprises Hazel with the news: he has cashed in his "cancer kid" Make-A-Wish for them to fly to Amsterdam to meet Van Houten and get the answers Hazel desperately wants.
Amsterdam is the setting for the pair to consummate their love and feel normal, if only for a couple of days. But the meeting with Van Houten does not go as planned; they find out the invite was an empty gesture made because he thought "you were too damned sick to actually do it." Lide, who is Van Houten's assistant, admits she made the arrangements for them to come, as well as pay for a romantic dinner, hoping this will help fix the brokenness each is dealing with. In anger, Van Houten fires her.
Van Houten, a bitter, mean drunk with an affection for Swedish rap, asserts there is nothing to his story; it is pure fiction, and the characters cease to exist once the story is over. He refuses to answer their questions, except for the fate of the character's hamster. He berates them for bothering him, and insults are traded.
Returning to the States, Gus confesses his cancer is back and is aggressive. Hazel-the-patient becomes Hazel-the-nurse, and is by his side through his final days. Gus asks Hazel and Isaac to grant him a pre-funeral at the church where they meet for group, and dies eight days later.
The aftermath is a nightmare for Hazel as she finds memorial messages posted to Gus' social media accounts absurd, wondering where all these people have been for the last year. At the funeral, she is surprised to find Van Houten sitting behind her as she is about to eulogize her boyfriend. Hazel goes to the front, and "I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living."
Van Houten asks Hazel and her parents for a ride to the graveside service while swigging whiskey. He reveals that he and Gus had continued to communicate after their in-person meeting, and Gus had asked Van Houten to redeem himself by attending his funeral and telling Hazel the real end of the story. He cryptically spouts that "life begat life;" Hazel calls him a child and kicks him out of the car.
A few days later, Hazel visits Isaac to talk and play video games. He reveals that Gus had been at work writing what he hoped would be a suitable sequel to the story Hazel desperately needed. Upon returning to her car, she is startled to realize Van Houten is once again hiding in her back seat. It is then that Van Houten reveals that the girl in his story was his daughter Anna, who died of leukemia when she was eight. When Hazel asks about the fate of the mother and the Dutch Tulip Man, he scolds her for trying to get him to write another book.
She hunts for Gus's final writings, and cannot find them; it is not on his laptop, not in his notebooks, not tucked away in his collection of books. She then realizes: he must have sent it to Van Houten. She contacts Lide, who goes to the house and finds Van Houten drunk and the letter from Gus on his desk. She demands he read it and respond. Van Houten reviews it and says, "Send it to the girl; I have nothing to add."
Gus's final gesture was to write a eulogy for Hazel. In it, he declares his love for her and apologizes "for leaving the scar of loss on her." What she means to the world, and how she may not have loved widely, she did deeply. He celebrates her gift for noticing things and paying attention.
It is a much better book than A Walk to Remember. I finally sat down to watch the movie, and although Willem Dafoe is the perfect choice to play scene-stealing Van Houten, the book is better than the movie.
