There we all were, busting a gut with great monologues and pyrotechnics, and this extraordinary genius just put this play together with enormous refinement, and then with two completely unprecedented and uncategorisable bursts of architecture in the middle вЂ“ terrible metaphor вЂ“ and there it was, theatre. He won by twenty-eight lengths, and he'd done it with so little вЂ“ and I mean that as an enormous compliment. It redefined the minima of theatrical validity. Even to HazelвЂ™s life.At the time when Godot was first done, it liberated something for anybody writing plays. Death is always traumatic and painful and it is what gives sense to everything else. It wasnвЂ™t fair, it wasnвЂ™t nice and it wasnвЂ™t heroic. There was some kind of non-verbalised plan, and GusвЂ™s insides blew it apart. They were star-crossed lovers from the very beginning, but none of them expected it to end that way. He was an idiot, but thatвЂ™s why I liked him.ДЄnd then I felt HazelвЂ™s pain and her loss. I saw him vomiting on himself and I saw him hallucinate and correct his own eulogy on his Last Good Day. But I stayed by his and HazelвЂ™s sides through the good and the bad.

I should have known I was too attached to him for his own sake and that at any moment everything would become a mess. I was seduced by his unlit cigarette and his Hazel Graces, and by the time they got to Amsterdam, I should have known he was a grenade. It happened slowly, he charmed me with his metaphors and his lopsided smile and his pompous words. I donвЂ™t know exactly when I fell in love with Augustus Waters, but IвЂ™m sure that I did. вЂњAs he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once,вЂќ says Hazel, and I know exactly what she means. Would she even consider herself a mother and would her parentsвЂ™ marriage survive such loss? And then, she met him. She used to spend her life waiting for her death and wondering what her mum would do once Hazel wasnвЂ™t there to take care of. Hazel Grace was, in fact, a walking corpse, empty of life she was nothing but a sick person and the book was nothing but a reflection of her insides. She is lonely, she is depressed and she spends her life hiding from the world re-reading An Imperial Affliction, a book which ends halfway through a sentence, and makes the reader wonder what would happen to those who survive. And that, my friends, was another side effect of dying.Д«efore she meets Augustus, all she is doing is waiting for her Last Good Day. After all, they met in вЂThe literal heart of Jesus,вЂ™ in the Support Group where the cast rotates all the time. She claims that almost everything is a side effect of dying, and if you think about it, even Hazel and GusвЂ™s love story is. I remember smiling after she said вЂњdepression is a side effect of dying.вЂќ It might be cruel and painful, it might be morbid, but itвЂ™s also one of the most honest statements IвЂ™ve ever read in a young-adult book. Thinking back, I can assure you that it only took me two paragraphs to fall in love with Hazel.

Despite all the death and pain, it is about love and having a chance to bid farewell to the world. There was only one possible explanation: in spite of everything, itвЂ™s a story about second chances. Not for the first time I began thinking about what makes this story such a beautiful and painful piece of literature.

I have recently been re-reading The Fault in Our Stars and, once again, I ended up sobbing crazily and muttering over and over вЂњDamn you, John Green!вЂќ while staring nastily at the book.

Godot book