This is just a short post to say that I have read John Green’s exquisite and heartbreaking novel The Fault in Our Stars, and I am now completely gutted.

Seriously, I have not wept so hard over a fictional character since the time my disbelieving sister found me surrounded by dirty Kleenex, clutching a dog-eared copy of The Portrait of a Lady, and crying my eyes out because poor Ralph was dead.

(“But you’ve read that book before!” she said.)

And may I just add that I am currently something like ninety years old, and that whole Portrait of a Lady episode was literally half my lifetime ago.

That is all.