Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The book that inspired the hit film!

Sundance U.S. Dramatic Audience Award
Sundance Grand Jury

This is the funniest book you’ll ever read about death.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he’s figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl.

This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg’s mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg’s entire life.

Last night when I finished this, I gave it three stars. It just fell flat at the ed for me, but looking back, I am going to bump that up to four. 

First of all, some trigger warnings: crude language, sexual content, talk of death and dying. 

While parts of this book were completely ridiculous, others were quite true to live. Andrews definitely has a new take on the story of teenagers dealing with the death of a friend. Greg is trying his best to just get through high school living on the edges, not being too close to any one group. That's how you keep high school from completely sucking. According to the back of the book, that lasts a whole eight hours before Greg's mom makes him become friends with a girl who has cancer and "brings about the destruction of Greg's life." What Greg doesn't realize until the end of the book, he didn't have much of a life to begin with. I'm glad this book didn't go into a romance between Greg and "the dying girl," Rachel. Some of the scenes with Rachel were just plane "cringe" (in the language of my teenagers). Even Greg says so in his writing. Some of the scenes are even written out like a play. This story gets quite crude very early on. My 13-year-old daughter read it and said that it made her very uncomfortable. Didn't seem to add anything to the story other then it was from the viewpoint of a teenage boy, and apparently that's what they think and talk about? I don't know, I enjoyed how real it felt. The things that Greg was feeling about being friends with this girl out of obligation, the way he felt about her dying. It just felt genuine.