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1-Page Summary of The Fault In Our Stars

Overall Summary

John Green’s novel The Fault in Our Stars is about a love story between two teenagers who meet in a cancer support group. This book rejects the common clichés of cancer narratives, which often glorify suffering and loss as noble and redemptive. Instead, this book shows that love can be both scary and painful.

Hazel Lancaster, age 16, and Augustus Waters, age 17, meet at a support group for teens with cancer. Hazel has thyroid cancer that’s spread to her lungs and Augustus had bone cancer which cost him a leg. They fall in love immediately due to their mutual intelligence and skepticism of the adult world’s attempt to hide reality from them. However, they both know that she is dying so he tries his hardest to win her over despite her hesitation because she doesn’t want anyone else to suffer when she dies like her parents did after losing another child; “I’m a grenade”.

A young girl named Hazel and her friend Augustus are cancer patients. They’re both in remission, but they’ve been dealt a bad hand with their conditions. The two of them meet each other at a Cancer Kid Support Group where they share the same interests. Their relationship develops when they take a trip to Amsterdam funded by the Genie Foundation (a fictional equivalent of Make-A-Wish), where Augustus arranges for Hazel to meet her favorite author Peter Van Houten, who has agreed by email to discuss his only book An Imperial Affliction with them in person. An Imperial Affliction is sacred book to Hazel; she identifies with the heroine Anna who dies from leukemia and wants answers about what happens after it ends. In Amsterdam, Hazel and Augustus share an intimate evening together before meeting up with their literary idol on this trip—Peter Van Houten—who turns out to be drunk and mean towards them because he doesn’t want anyone asking him questions about his book or characters that could spoil it for readers like himself. He also mocks them for even wanting answers about his novel’s plotline, which makes things awkward between all three of them as they leave his house in disgust afterwards from such an unpleasant encounter with him there. Afterwards though during their climb up the Anne Frank House (which was very hard work) while talking things over together, something exciting happens: Hazel impulsively kisses Augustus on top of one of its buildings! And then later back at their hotel room…they have sex for the first time!

Augustus tells Hazel that his cancer has returned and spread throughout his body. He is dying, and there’s no cure for it. Hazel stays by Augustus’ side as he deteriorates physically, emotionally, mentally, and finally dies in the hospital after a month of suffering from pain medication.

Hazel is overcome by grief but also strengthened by it. She realizes that the pain she once tried to save Augustus from—of loving someone only to lose them to cancer—is worth suffering for the experience of true love, and that their relationship was limited in time but limitless in depth of feeling. She gives a sentimental eulogy at his funeral because it comforts his parents, and she faces life after Augustus more openly.

Chapter 1

When the book opens, Hazel is going to a weekly support group for teens with cancer. She has thyroid cancer that spread to her lungs and nearly killed her but an experimental drug called Phalanxifor stopped it from growing. Now she carries an oxygen tank everywhere and has a greatly diminished life expectancy. She hates going to the meetings; she thinks they’re too full of hope, strength, and faith—it’s all fake sentimentality according to her. But she goes because her mother wants her there so she exchanges sarcastic faces with Isaac who lost one of his eyes due to cancer as they both laugh at the leader referring to the church basement where they meet as “the Literal Heart of Jesus”.