Fire Colour One, by Jenny Valentine

Sometimes you pick up a book and, within the first few pages, find yourself asking, why have I never read this author before? For me, Fire Colour One was one of those books.

This is Iris’s story. Bright as flame but troubled, thanks to her turbulent childhood with her horrible, blinkered mother Hannah, and self-absorbed stepfather Lowell. It is also Ernest’s story – Iris’s real father – and Iris’s uncovering of it. While Hannah snoops and fishes for a hefty inheritance, Iris sits at Ernest’s bedside during the last days of his life and learns a million things. Things like how her parents met, and how everything really ended. Things like the truth.

My copy of the book describes it as ‘A bold and brilliant novel about deception, love and redemption,’ and that’s exactly what it is. It’s hard to put my finger on what makes it so good, it’s just got that je ne sais quoi that books like The Fault in Our Stars have. Iris is so vivid, and I felt so much for her – so much pain and so much love. She misses her lost friend Thurston so much, but doesn’t know how to find him; and she needs something more, something indefinable, but she doesn’t know how to find that either. So she builds fires. She doesn’t really build them to cause trouble or to cause damage; she builds them because she has to, because she loves the flames so much, because fire makes her feel better, because it encompasses her. Fire is magic and alive – it even needs air to be able to breathe, while Iris practically needs fire to be able to breathe.

“We see what we want to see, regardless of what we are actually looking at, nothing at all to do with the truth,” (pg.113) Iris tells us, and this is so true - of everyone, I think - but especially of her mother. Themes of lies and truth run through this novel like smoke – ever present, but impossible to catch hold of – along with themes of art and fire. It’s irresistible and unputdownable and truly excellent.

And the title? Fire Colour One is also the name of a painting by Yves Klein – a real painting, not a fictional one, and rather an important one too. But you’ll have to read the book to learn of its significance to this particular story…

I’d heard good things about author Jenny Valentine and knew that Broken Soup, her second book, had been shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize when it came out. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t expect the exceptional story and writing and characters that I found inside the pages of Fire Colour One. John Green, eat your heart out. I definitely need to go back and read her other books now.

The Coverflip Debate (though, really, what is there to debate?)

I have a confession to make: I judge books by their covers. I know it’s kind of inherently wrong, but we all do it, don’t we? After all, covers give us that first impression about what kind of story is going to be hidden within a book’s pages. Something with a spaceship on the front: sci fi. Sepia image of barbed wire with silhouette of a soldier: war fiction. Partial body-shot of a woman in soft tones? Chick-lit.

I find cover design and cover conventions endlessly fascinating, but author Maureen Johnson recently got me thinking even deeper about it than I had ever done before. After tweeting, ‘I do wish I had a dime for every email I get that says, “Please put a non-girly cover on your book so that I can read it – signed, A Guy” ’ Johnson set her followers a challenge: take a popular book, and reimagine what the cover would look like if the book had been written by someone of the opposite gender. The results are not only fascinating, but also quite revealing.

First, though, take a moment to visit your local Waterstones. Wander down the bookshelves, through fiction and teen fiction, and take a look at the covers. What do they say to you? How often is a book written by a female author (particularly in the teen section) given a pink or ‘girly’ cover? What reaction does this illicit from you? What, after all, does ‘girly’ mean?

Johnson (and others) argue that there is a tendency for books by women to be given a female cover, no matter what the subject matter actually is, or even whether or not the protagonist is male or female. Sarah Rees Brennan points out that books by female authors are, more often than not, “Packaged in a way that clearly indicates that they’re a girl – and thus that the work isn’t as good as a guy’s… Books that look like that are girl’s books. Girls’ books aren’t good.”  The perception is that if a book has a girly cover then the words inside are fluffy, light, breezy, when in fact they are just as likely to be anything but. Why are we, and the publishing industry, bowing down to this?

Consider this: John Green’s bestselling The Fault in Our Stars. A book written by a guy, but told by a girl. It actually has a very non-descript cover that doesn’t tell you much about who the people inside are likely to be or what they’re likely to be doing and, as such, is not marketed specifically to boys or to girls, but is (theoretically) equally likely to be picked up by either. But what if John Green was Joanna Green? Most likely result: female author writing a female protagonist, equals female audience, which equals female cover, such as with Jenny Downham’s Before I Die (a book which covers a similar subject to Green’s).

What, then, makes one book a girl’s book, and what makes another book a guy’s book? Is there – or should there be – such a thing? Why does a book featuring a girl and written by a girl have to be marketed exclusively for the domain of girls? Why should it be that boys can’t read books about girls? I’m a girl and I’m perfectly happy to read books about boys and by boys, and I’m sure there are plenty of boys out there equally interested in reading about girls - as highlighted by Maureen Johnson’s tweet. But when they’re put off by overtly girly covers it’s surely a knock back for everyone involved.

The correlation between cover style and content means that because I think I know what kind of book I like to read and what kind of covers are generally used on those kinds of books, I know what sort of covers to look out for. But does this limit my reading choices? Surely putting pink and girly covers on books – covers that put boys off – means that boys are missing out on these great books, their thoughts, ideas and adventures.

Some of the new book covers created by Maureen Johnson’s coverflip challenge are absolutely brilliant, and in some cases (particularly where a female author is reimagined as a male author) much better and more imaginative than the originals, not only proving Johnson’s original point, but also made me interested in books that I hadn't been grabbed by before. After all, cover design is ultimately about getting as many people as possible to buy the book, isn’t it? And when marketing departments choose to stereotype books by female authors as being appropriate only for a female audience - targeting only half their potential audience - aren’t they automatically cutting out a big pile of revenue?

Finally: will the industry sit up and take notice, or will the internetish stir Johnson’s post has caused simply be a flash in the pan? Gender stereotyping shortchanges everyone involved, so why don't we put a stop to it? Either way, all hands down to Johnson for raising (or re-raising) a thought-provoking issue and asking thought-provoking questions. I don’t think any teen (for she is commonly categorised as a teen author – though that’s a matter for a whole other discussion) could go wrong by having her as a role model – whether they are male or female.

John Green talks The Fault in Our Stars at Cadogan Hall, London

What is the collective noun for a gathering of Nerdfighters? What, for that matter is a Nerdfighter? And why are they professing their love for John Green and his book The Fault in Our Stars?

Despite being the catalyst for a worldwide community, seven consecutive weeks at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and, along with his brother Hank, a YouTube superstar, Green was affable - and slightly bashful - as he addressed London’s packed out Cadogan Hall the first Sunday in February.

“Books only work when they are a gift,” he says. “I try to give a gift of the best story that I can make. I need to write the story generously, and that’s the only time when writing works.”

The Fault in Our Stars was ten years in the making for this very reason. The story of Hazel and Augustus, from their first meeting to their last, it’s a heartbreaking and heart-fulfilling love story of simultaneously small and epic proportions. They are smart, intelligent and funny teenagers with wishes waiting to be fulfilled, but for the incurable fault in their stars: cancer.

After a stint as a chaplain in a children’s hospital, Green “started writing all of these stories that were about a children’s hospital, except they weren’t about children or hospital: they were mostly about this 22 year old hospital chaplain, who was like me but super handsome. It was like, which lady doctor will he choose... it was pretty bad. And I think it was bad in retrospect because it was self-indulgent, it was about me, not just literally but also figuratively: I was writing it for me, not for you.”

And so he wrote some other books, and started the Vlog Brothers YouTube channel, and about a million other things too - the Nerdfighting community among them. Nerdfighters are “not people who fight nerds - that would be weird - it’s people who fight for nerds, and celebrate intellectualism and thoughtfulness.” And then he met one particular Nerdfighter: Esther Earl, to whom The Fault in Our Stars is dedicated.

“From the time that I met her she was very sick with cancer, and she died in August 2010, when she was sixteen.” As a result of their friendship, he says, “I came to think very differently about the story that I was writing.” Irritated by stories purportedly about sick people really being about healthy people - “ ‘Oh this sick person came into my life and as a result of having known her, and as a result of her untimely death, I now know to be grateful for every day’ ” - he set out to give voice to sick people themselves.

“In my experience, sick and dying people are every bit as funny and vivacious and interesting and angry and annoying and everything else as other people. I wanted to argue that it is not only long lives that are full and rich and good lives, but that a short life can also be a good life.” And so the handsome chaplain disappeared, and something outstanding took his place. Packed full of metaphor and symbolism and heart and resonance, it is meaningful in a multitude of ways, and I have yet to meet a single reader who has not fallen in love with its characters - or its writer.

After telling us the story of how The Fault in Our Stars came to be, Green reads a short extract and then welcomes his brother Hank to the stage for a quirky, musical interlude. Both brothers are incredibly articulate, answering questions from the audience with such panache and humour that teens and adults alike surely need look no further for better role models. As time begins to dwindle, questions and answers become more frantic, the scene dissolves into mild chaos, the camaraderie between the brothers in evidence. This, though - the mistakes, the goofery - is what makes them human and makes the show both fun and informative, just like Green’s characters, whose faults and imperfections, as much as their inherent goodness, makes us love them and their story.

Overall, he says, “This book is a collaboration between lots and lots and lots of people... You think that books are written by just one person, but that’s not the case at all, no book was ever written by just one person.” This magnanimity, alongside the fact that he treats both his characters and his audience with respect, perhaps explains why, while he essentially writes for teens, he has found just as dedicated an audience with adults. “I think all audiences are vulnerable, all human beings are vulnerable, we’re all afraid, scared and innocent. I don’t feel a particular responsibility because many of my readers are teenagers that I don’t feel for my adult readers. But I do feel a responsibility: I think that I have to write hopeful novels because I believe that the only true novels are hopeful ones.”

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Beautiful. Intense. Heart-rending; heart-warming.

These are just a few of the things left floating around in my story-scarred brain after completing The Fault in Our Stars. I thought it was going to be one type of book, but it turned out to be something else entirely. Within the first chapter or two I had made a whole list of assumptions about where the story was going to lead me, only to have those turned upside down by the end of the book.

I knew it was going to be good - a whole raft of customer and bookseller recommendations couldn’t dispute that - but I didn’t expect it to be this good. I didn’t expect the writing to blow me away. I didn’t expect it to be so full of world-changing thoughts and wise words. I didn’t expect it to be so immensely beautiful, and now I regret rushing through it in my desperation to finish the story, to find out how it ends; to experience all the emotions in one intense day. How does he do it? The conclusion I have swiftly reached is that there’s no better role model for the world than a book written by John Green.

The story is this: Hazel has cancer. She lives with it and it lives with her. Depression, she says, is not a side effect of cancer, it is a side effect of death; it is a side effect of being consumed by your own, out-of-control cells. But, worried about depression, Hazel’s mother sends Hazel, much to her disgust, out into the world to attend a teen cancer support group. And so Hazel meets Augustus, which is, of course, the real beginning of this story.

Augustus is not all that he might be cracked up to be, given the premise of this story. He is not perfect. He has ideals that, as far as Hazel can see, neither he nor she can live up to, and it is heart-rending to see him fall apart in their pursuit. Hazel, in contrast, has a very simple set of requests for life, only to discover that life can offer a her lot more than she thought possible. I’m not going to lie: only the most hard-hearted and callous reader will be able to complete The Fault in Our Stars without shedding a few - or a bucketful - of tears. It is just that powerful.

The title references a Shakespearean quote that Green himself refers to about half way through the book: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.” The character is talking about ‘hamartia’, the idea that every hero has a fatal flaw, some unconscious weakness that reveals itself at the worst possible moment, creating their downfall. It’s a concept that crops up again and again in literature, and is particularly resonant in Greek tragedy. Thus, we cannot blame the stars for what goes wrong in our lives, but only ourselves. Green seems to turn this around in his title - it’s not, after all, called ‘Not the Fault in Our Stars’, but ‘The Fault in Our Stars’. Does this mean he disagrees with the concept of hamartia? Or is it simply that the overriding fault in his characters' lives - cancer - is not of their own making? My mind flip-flops through a whole series of contradictions and ideas while I think about this - hamartia versus stars, stars versus hamartia. Because where cancer is concerned, while it’s not our fault, it is something our bodies do to themselves without our choice, which is much how hamartia works. So perhaps cancer isn’t a fault in our stars, but in ourselves. Either way, hamartia is definitely something Green gets me thinking about. Are we to blame for the mistakes we make, or are they simple written in our stars?

Another theme riding through the story is the idea of how we as humans commemorate or remember people after their deaths. This is brought to the reader most directly through another Shakespeare quote, this time from the fifty-fifth sonnet. “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments / Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; / But you shall shine more bright in these contents / Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.” The character  then points out that despite the sentiment of this verse, the fact that it exists to commemorate a particular death, today we actually know virtually nothing about the person for whom it was written. The idea of living on after we die, of wanting to make our mark on the world, consumes Augustus much as it does many people. Often, the need to achieve things with our lives, whether to prove that our lives have not been wasted, or whether to somehow make sure we won’t be forgotten after we’ve gone, spurs us on. Peter, who writes these lines in The Fault in Our Stars, tells us that we cannot immortalise the lost by writing about them. Ironically, this is exactly what he has tried to do and, I suppose, it is what Hazel is doing too. But, Hazel reminds us, Nothing gold can stay, wrote Robert Frost.

Overall, what I take away from this book is that love is transformative. It is transformative in every way imaginable, whether that is love for a lover or for a child. But death and loss, and the fear of dying are transformative too. It is a sad story, but it is an uplifting one too. It feels true, and it leaves me feeling wistful, and mindful, and with heartache.

“It seemed to me that I had already seen everything pure and gold in the world,” Hazel writes. “And I was beginning to suspect that even if death didn’t get in the way, the kind of love that Augustus and I share could never last. So dawn goes down to day, the poet wrote. Nothing gold can stay.”

It leaves me with a wish to be able to write as John Green writes. To be able to evoke beauty. To be able to find that essence of the human soul.