24 July 2015

Review #283: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“When you convert a good book to a film.. stupid things happen”


----Jesse Andrews



Jesse Andrews, an American novelist and screenwriter, has penned a brilliant and thoroughly funny YA contemporary novel about friends and films, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, where two odd teenagers come across in each other's lives with a common ground- social awkwardness. This book simply turns their friendship into something beautiful, funny and thoroughly inspiring.





I just got my hands on the movie adaption of this novel with the same title directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, screenplay done by the author himself with a cast of eccentric young actors namely, Olivia Cooke (the girl from TV-sitcom Bates Motel where she too plays a Cancer-girl!), Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, Nick Offerman, Connie Britton. And I can't wait to watch it. So before watching it, I ordered a kindle copy of this book from Amazon and oh my!! This is one of the my best book investment till date. And also I don't want to be the last one to read this epic teen fiction that has cancer (not that cliched type!), friendship and love. Also the C- for Cancer doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be C- for cliches while portraying it in fiction.



Synopsis:

Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together they spend their time making movies, their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics.

Until Greg’s mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel.

Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia—-cue extreme adolescent awkwardness—-but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed. When Rachel stops treatment, Greg and Earl decide the thing to do is to make a film for her, which turns into the Worst Film Ever Made and becomes a turning point in each of their lives.

And all at once Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight.



Greg is the one who narrates his story about his senior year in high school, who has just one friend, his "co-worker" with whom he makes movie parodies, Earl. Then there is Rachel, the "dying-girl" who has acute myelogenous leukemia and Greg's kind-of-ex-girlfriend and reluctantly he had to strike an unusual friendship with Rachel, since he didn't want to get too attached with a "dying girl". These are the characters and Greg is our narrator who sails the ship of this not-so-great-and-totally-imperfect life in high school.

This book is the perfectly example of what actually life is in reality, that are hardly found in any movies or YA novels these days, since the authors are so busy in sugar-coating the bigger problems in the life of a teenager with cliched outcomes and mostly by projecting stereotype characters. Life is a bitch..try to portray that.. and there are characters who will forever remain socially-awkward with no friends wearing nerd type of glasses, looking insanely unattractive to the whole world! Hats off to this debut novelist, Jesse Andrews for projecting the hardcore reality with humor and sheer crappiness through the characters.

Well some might try to compare it with Green's The Fault in Our Stars, but let me ask you this, which was the last cancer book that you read had made you go ROFL literally? Which was the last cancer book that you read where sad endings were overshadowed by banal happy endings? No, because you're yet to meet that last book (let's not hope that otherwise the future of YA fiction will be doomed with more bromide sort of YA stories!!)

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is one in a million book where both the characters as well as the plot are equally realitic, magical and captivating and completely honest with it's flaws, imperfection, bullshit-ness , weird-ness and ugly truths.

Greg befriends his once-upon-a-time-sort-of-girlfriend, Rachel on his mother's request since she was dying. Reluctantly Greg becomes friends with this unusual girl who is not very brave, not too enlightening or deep with her thoughts or speeches since she is dying and people who are on the same journey to death are all of a sudden become very philosophical, instead Rachel is someone who you can't put your finger on properly since the book is not about her or about her cancer, and I respect the author for projecting her so simply with her flaws and awkwardness.

Greg might annoy some or his disapproving and insecure narrative might make some fall in love with him and I surely did fall in love with him. His negativity about almost everything..especially about himself made the story pragmatic and so very honest. I don't have to say that he is highly relatable since he is the most realistic characters that I every came across. He along with his only buddy, Earl, makes a movie for Rachel which is a total crap yet it feels so good to have that kind of crappiness.

Earl is the guy who stands beside Greg and together they harbor a passion for film making (parodies, to be specific!) Earl is foul-mouthed and chain-cigarette-smoker who is the only guy who can see Rachel's cancer like we are supposed to be looking at those cancer kids. Earl is like someone who throws no bullshit or no sugar coated words of enlightenment or pretending to act brave a cancer kid- Rachel. Instead his sincerity towards Rachel made me once gain fall for the third flawed character of this book. Jesse Andrews.. you're a genius author.

The rest of the characters are also strongly developed with depth and enough realism. The prose is utterly hilarious and I had to hold the edge of my bed to keep myself from falling over since I was laughing so hard. The climax is like real life and I loved it how the author portrayed it with a bit of emotions and with the fact that we eventually move on along with our lives from all our shitty incidents.

Anyways, if I've convinced you enough then you must grab a copy of this book now, since you don't want to be the last one reading this remarkable book which is a page-turner.
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Author Info:
Jesse Andrews is an author, screenwriter, and former German youth hostel receptionist. He was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and is a graduate of Schenley High School and Harvard University. He currently makes his home in Boston, MA.
Visit him here 


Book Purchase Links:

3 comments:

  1. I reviewed this book on my blog a few days ago. I also loved it. I’m so excited to see the movie now.

    Aj @ Read All The Things!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am so glad you could love this one! It's on my TBR and I really want to watch it before the movie comes out.

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