Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Jesse Andrews
Amulet Books
Published March 1, 2012

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About Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit film!

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 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.

Fiercely funny, honest, heart-breaking—this is an unforgettable novel from a bright talent, now also a film that critics are calling “a touchstone for its generation” and “an instant classic.”

My Review

The opening chapters of the book were a little hard for me to read. The main character’s harsh judgments of other students, which lean heavily on stereotypes, are kind of off-putting.

As he tells the story, his unspoken grief is palpable, which drew me into the book. It helped me see some of the hurtful comments as a defense or distraction from the hurt this kid was feeling.

At some level, it’s clear to me reading the book that the author uses at least some of those statements on purpose to help readers understand the immaturity and inexperience of the main character. He’s not a great guy; even he will tell you this. (Especially if you try to say something nice about him.) He didn’t even begin either of his friendships for benevolent reasons.

But he cares how people feel and wants desperately to connect with them. He’s the epitome of an awkward teenage boy. Reading this book instantly transported me back to some of the experiences I had with boys in high school.

The story doesn’t romanticize cancer. It doesn’t even romanticize being a teenager. It scrapes away any tendency toward glorifying a teenager’s experience and looks at a simple, reluctant friendship between awkward kids who aren’t amazing at anything.

In fact, the book doesn’t even center the story of the girl with cancer. She’s not even named in the title. While I wish that the story made more space for Rachel’s experience, the narrative does wrestle with that loss. Greg realizes at one point that he barely knows anything about Rachel and that so much of his time has been spent thinking about himself and his own feelings rather than centering hers.

The story does fall prey to using a girl’s death as a vehicle through which the main character learns. It’s true. I wonder how the story would have been different if the author reversed the roles of Earl and Rachel so that Greg and Rachel made movies together and then befriended Earl after a cancer diagnosis. We’ll never know, as that’s a completely different story.

Misogyny in Young Adult Literature

One of the things I find really hard to read is literature in which boys objectify and dehumanize girls. I grew up in a purity culture world that normalized that kind of behavior, effectively considering girls temptresses and objects of lust. So, reading about boys talking that way can get under my skin really fast.

I don’t want us to treat it as an acceptable part of the teen experience. Girls don’t deserve that.

One of the powerful moments in the story comes from a moment in which Earl, Greg’s best friend, confronts him about the way he treats Rachel and the other people around him. He tells Greg to stop obsessing over people who don’t care about him and start thinking about the people who do. It’s a hard-hitting scene that, in at least some way, addresses Greg’s behavior and challenges him to be a better person. I really appreciated that scene and love that this push forward came from another guy his age.

One of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2023

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was one of the top ten most challenged books of 2023. Among the reasons I saw cited for the challenges and book bans were that it contains profanity and some misogynistic commentary. Some have described it as “pornographic,” which is, frankly, hilarious since there is no nudity or sexual contact throughout the book. There is, admittedly, one very cringy scene in which the characters make jokes about oral sex. I can’t see how that meets the definition of pornography.

There is a lot of profanity in the book. It’s true. There’s a lot of profanity in a lot of young adult literature in general. While I have some personal feelings about this, I don’t think that a few parents get to decide what everyone else’s kids should be allowed to read. I think the author makes a great point in an article for Deadline that kids who haven’t found books that resonate with them may find that a book in which the characters talk the way they talk might help them connect to literature.

Conclusion

If you made it this far, you can tell I’ve got a lot of thoughts and feelings about this book. I liked it more than I expected, despite its flaws. It presents a powerful story of friendship and how human connection, no matter how mundane, makes a difference in our lives.

It’s weird that this book is among the top ten most challenged books of 2023. I can’t imagine that anyone who regularly reads young adult literature would consider the content of this book vastly different from that of many other books on the shelves for teenagers.

Content Notes for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Recommended for Ages 16 up.

Representation
Greg and Rachel are Jewish. Earl is Black.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Lots of profanity. Some crude language.

Romance/Sexual Content
References to sex. Some explicit statements about sex. No sexual contact on scene.

Spiritual Content
Greg references attending Hebrew School with Rachel.

Violent Content
Greg and Earl repeatedly watch a violent movie, but the book doesn’t describe it in any detail. Greg makes some objectifying/misogynistic comments about girls. They’re usually brief. Greg makes some comments using racist stereotypes about other kids at his school. He and another boy make a racist comment about the contents of ethnic food.

Drug Content
Earl smokes cigarettes and is rumored to have used hard drugs before the story began. Greg and Earl accidentally get high when they eat some food they don’t realize has marijuana in it.

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