My Heartbeat
September 7, 2009
My Heartbeat
Garret Freymann-Weyr
Ellen has been in love with James since the seventh grade. She loves her brother Link (James’s best friend) just as much. The three of them have a close-knit relationship, the boys sharing a special bond Ellen accepts she isn’t part of. Ellen has just started ninth grade at the school James and Link are about to graduate from. One of her new friends casually mentions that she thinks James and Link are a couple.
So Ellen wonders. Finally, she asks them, but still she doesn’t get a clear answer—because neither of them is sure.
My Heartbeat cover
As they each begin to understand further, an interesting point is brought up. James tells Ellen that she was their insurance. So long as she was around, they were safe—nothing that shouldn’t be happening would end up happening.
My Heartbeat is a story of fear and expectations, and what it means to really know someone. There are unwritten social laws yet to be understood, and a mind with a heartbeat yet to be formed. It’s a love triangle that you don’t even realize is there until you take a step back and stop to think. It’s a love triangle where each one truly loves the other two, and that, I think is something to be admired.
Together and apart, they deal with their own issues. From all sorts of rebellion, to music, to advanced math, running seven miles every morning, searching for happy endings, sketching strangers, and learning to see—to really see, the three of them develop subtly but beautifully.
James has experienced much more than either of the siblings, in terms of sex and life in general, and speaks with wisdom that he doesn’t acknowledge. Ellen and Link are both under the guidance of a pair of loving parents: a mother with the ability to understand what is unsaid, and a father who wants nothing more than for his children to develop their own minds (so long as they conform to certain boundaries).
There is no lack of love in this story.
In the words of one of the characters, a good book is a reflection of some kind of truth. This was a good book.
Hard Love
August 31, 2009
I was a dependent twelve-year-old when I picked up Hard Love in the bookstore and handed it to my mother for her to skim and scan through the pages and ultimately determine whether or not the book was fit for me to read. She concluded, from what she saw, that the book was mostly about the character’s relationship with his parents, and was therefore safe for twelve-year-old me to read. Also, it was multi-awarded, with Michael Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature on a silver seal printed on the cover.
The book is also a winner of the Lambda Literary Award, which not many people know is given by a foundation that pushes for “raising the status of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people throughout society by rewarding and promoting excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives.”
Hard Love cover
Ellen Wittlinger writes the book for everyone whose first love was a hard love—and really, whose wasn’t?
Each member of the very diverse group of characters (who have nothing in common except for their passion for writing what they call zines) has his or her own set of personal issues revolving around dysfunctional family, sexual identity, and strangely enough, names.
You have a pair of very understanding, supportive parents on Marisol’s side, and another two parents who you really couldn’t call a pair, extremely distant and unable to communicate, on John’s.
Interspersed with excerpts from the characters’ zines, Ani DiFranco lyrics, letters, and poetry, is a story of how John falls in love with Marisol. John is not particularly interesting in comparison to Marisol Guzman, Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee Cambridge, Massachusetts, rich spoiled lesbian private-school gifted-and-talented writer virgin looking for love.
And it’s hard love, because you can’t blame anyone for why it just can’t work out. He can’t help who he fell in love with (and they say you’re not supposed to help it, anyway), and she can’t help who she can’t fall in love with. They’ve both had their hearts broken, but they aren’t meant to be the ones to mend the other one.
It’s not a happy ending, but you understand why it just can’t be.
