Review 3: Hard Love

Citation:

Wittlinger, Ellen. Hard love . New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1999. Print.

Annotation: John meets a fellow zine writer, Marisol the self-proclaimed “rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted-and-talented writer virgin” and becomes entangled in a friendship based on a their shared habit of “trusting no one”. While John's first love turns out to be a hard love, he admits, “It was the reason I was no longer comatose after an entire life of sleepwalking”.

Justification for Nomination:

     In a narrative that addresses a quintessential adolescent experience, first love, Ellen Wittlinger manages to tell a non-traditional story of a boy who has yet to consider his sexuality and self-proclaimed "lesbian virgin" in an authentic and engaging way. The story is told from the first person perspective of John (a.k.a. Gio) with pieces of his and other writers' zines grafted in to give the reading a true-to-life multimedia experience. Even the form of each chapter begins with a "shout out" to zines, the first few lines of each being slanted to imitate the off-center, photocopied pages of a zine. The pieces of writing that are included in the text appear on pages of ruled notebook paper, scrawled in the writing of a teenage boy, type-written, photocopied or layered in magazine cutouts and doodles. As a reader, I felt as if I was being handed the piece by a friend to give an opinion or picking the zine off of the shelf at Tower Records myself. Wittlinger's format is believable and dynamic.

     In Hard Love, the voice is that of a sixteen year old boy, but the story blurs the lines of gender and sexuality. This is not a novel that can be classified as "literature for young men" or "literature for young women". John calls himself a neuter and questions his sexuality, only due to his lack of interest in women, but finds himself entangled in a relationship with a lesbian. John and Marisol's relationship is hardly a traditional dating relationship, but it seems at times more than a traditional friendship. The ambiguity of John and Marisol's relationship so closely mirrored reality, that a vague sense of deja' vu followed me throughout the novel. Not that the details of either character applied to my own adolescence, but the experiences- of finding out who you are, what you believe, how you classify love- the developmental concepts at the heart of this story, all rang so true that I was transported back to my own seventeen year old self while voraciously and effortlessly consuming this novel. John's voice and his experience transcend the gender lines that are often drawn hard and fast in any type of romantic novel and makes the experience accessible to a myriad of readers rather than a single gender or sexual orientation.

     The artfully crafted plot of Hard Love extends it narrative's authenticity and audience appeal. Teen readers can easily identify with the scenes taking place at school, the prom, coffee shops, music stores and at the homes of both divorced parents. Wittlinger pays homage to a "founding father" of adolescent literature, J. D. Salinger in John's zine title, Bananafish, as well as the use of Nine Stories as the bible on which he takes an oath. In the last few chapters of Hard Love, the experiences of John and Marisol resonant with older teen audiences in particular as they prepare to depart from their families. The two leave for a zine writers conference in Cape Cod unbeknownst to their parents. John leaves scathing letters for both of his parents, reflecting the need of many adolescents to be brutally honest with their parents after a lifetime of acquiescence. Meanwhile Marisol makes plans to depart to New York city and find herself, explaining to John that she must leave now, because she is at “escape velocity” (coincidentally the name of her zine). John and Marisol's respective journeys into self-discovery and adulthood are left to the reader's imagination. We do not know whether she “makes it in the big city”, or if John reconciles with his father or maintains his new found relationships with fellow zine writers. Marisol leaves John with the words “I love you too, Gio... As much as I can” Then she disappears. Wittlinger respects her audience by giving them an ambiguous and realistic ending to an authentic story. She does not trivialize the adolescent experience by tacking on a “happy ending” so that everything looks nice and neat. Wittlinger acknowledges that life is messy, especially for teens- and I believe that makes her work not only accessible to real-life teens, but meaningful as well.

Genre: Coming of Age/ Printz/ Romance/ Multicultural