Review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Author: Jesse Andrews
Published: March 1st 2012
Publisher: Abrams
Hardcover, 296 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: The Book Depository


Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a very strange book indeed. I’m sure some of you read the blurb and thought: Not another cancer book! Really, are books about teens with cancer the new black?! Yeah, I thought so too. It turns out that this book has very little to do with cancer. It has more to do with several other, completely unrelated things like filmmaking, high school social structure, odd friendships and nagging parents. It’s certainly not a sob story. The only tears I’d shed while reading it were caused by laughter.


My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind For Good or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you’re supposed to think are deep because they’re in italics.

This is where I would normally write a lengthy plot summary, but I’m afraid my usual reviewing patterns simply won’t work for this book. Greg Gaines is a normal, awkward teenage boy who prides himself in the fact that he doesn’t belong to any of the usual groups in high school, but is on friendly terms with everyone. He only has one real friend, his complete opposite, Earl. When a girl from his school gets leukemia, Greg’s mother makes Greg spend time with her, and as much as he doesn’t want to, he’s too afraid of his mother to say no.

Greg Gaines, our main character, assumed the role of the author, which led to a lot of self-deprecating humor (and made me think that he was also, at least partly, an author surrogate). Although I’ll be the first to admit that his observations about his own writing were often hilarious, I did feel that the whole thing was overdone at times. A good joke can only be good for so long before it becomes downright annoying. Here’s just one example:

And that’s part of the backstory for me and Earl. It’ll probably be relevant later, although who really knows. I can’t believe you’re still reading this. You should smack yourself in the face a couple of times right now, just to complete the outstandingly stupid experience that is this book.

That is just one example in which an invisible line was crossed and Greg’s story stopped being funny and became eye-roll inducing. That doesn’t mean, however, that this book didn’t have incredibly funny moments. It is, after all, based almost entirely on humor, and the kind of humor that actually worked for me most of the time. It is what kept me reading even after I realized that there isn’t an actual plot to speak of. The fact that it took me a while to even notice says enough about the kind of narrative we’re dealing with here.

I honestly think that I’m not the intended audience for this book, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it. In many ways, it provides a realistic insight into a teenage boy’s mind, and that’s something we (I) don’t see enough of. Do I think you should read this book? Definitely. It’s not a book that you’ll read compulsively, so it’s best to pick it up when you’re otherwise preoccupied. It’s one of those books you can abandon for a while and go back to whenever you feel like it. There are times when that’s exactly what I’m looking for: a light, fun read that will allow me to focus on other, more important things.