GUIDED BY STARS
John Green has written eight books, which, for a mid-career author of fiction for young adults, is good going. The difference is his sixth novel, The Fault in Our Stars, sold 23 million copies and was made into a tearjerker movie that took US$300 million at the box office. Yet, despite being published in more than 55 languages, Green is not sure he will ever write a novel again.
“I like writing fiction and I really would like to write several more novels, if I can,” he tells the Listener from his home in Indianapolis, in the US Midwest. “But I don’t know if that will happen. It was five and a half relatively long years between The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it again.”
What precipitated such doubt was this: late in 2017, after a month-long publicity tour for Green was struck down by labyrinthitis. It’s an inflammation of the inner ear, which because it manages our sense of balance and motion, usually manifests as crippling vertigo, an unpleasant involuntary movement of the eyes and punishing nausea. He was confined to his bed for weeks, unable to read, write, watch TV or play with his children, stuck with his own morbid thoughts. After about six weeks,
