Hard Love

Hard Love, it is a fact of life. We've all been there, or will be at some point. The moment you realize that often love is not the happily ever after, easy love of fairy tales but instead can be chaotic, confused, and can seem at times indistinguishable from pain. Especially when you fall in love with the wrong person. What do you do then? This is exactly what John Galardi struggles to figure out in Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger. When we first meet John, he claims to be immune to emotion, which he states is fortunate because people can't play off his sympathy. He doesn't have any. Living during the weeks with his emotionally distant mother and spending weekends alone at his absentee father’s apartment, John has perfected the art of keeping people at a distance. At school, he is a loner. He even describes his only friend as "just another hallow soul, trying to pass for normal." He is so cut off from himself, he can’t even decide whether he is gay or straight, he’s just indifferent. That is until he stumbles into the world a zines. Zines are like a written form of blogs, self published magazines that offer expression to anyone with an imagination and the commitment to produce them. Through zines, John discovers the outlet that writing can offer to his self-exploration. It also brings him into contact with fellow ziner Marisol. Marisol is a self-proclaimed “rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted and talented writer virgin looking for love.” Marisol is unexpected, to say the least, but the two quickly become friends, as each recognize in the other a kindred spirit. As the two become closer John finds himself letting down barriers he’d forgotten were there and discovering what it means to be alive. Soon, however, the fact that Marisol is a lesbian begins to create difficulties as each tries to figure out how to love the other and both discover just how hard love can be.

Hard Love is a great novel, very deserving of the Printz Honor Award it won in 2000. This novel touches on the difficulty of loving and being loved in a very human and authentic way. The great Russian author Dostoevsky wrote, "Love in practice is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." Love is not easy. Sometimes we hurt those we love or are hurt by them. It is unavoidable and something that we can't change. So, what do we do about it? John retreats. He becomes defensive, creates a barrier around himself that cuts himself off not only from any other person, but also from himself. He alienates himself and in the process of doing so, he stops feeling alive. But with Marisol, John begins to love again, he begins to live again. And it is not easy, because she cannot love him the same way that he loves her. It is hard as each must make decisions that will ultimately hurt the other, but that is just how love sometimes is.

At one point, John hears a song entitled "Hard Love," and he immediately feels like it was written about him. Listen to it here, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ejMPz5yOb0 . What makes a guy hear this and understand exactly what the artist (Bob Franke) was communicating? Read Hard Love and find out. It is definitely worth the time.