April 16th, 2010
Dear Ms. Monaco,
I have recently finished a great book called Hard Love, by Ellen Wittlinger. I rated it a 10 out 10 because I felt that it was incredibly easy to connect with the main character, John, even though I am nothing like him. I was so surprised because I didn’t think for one second I would enjoy this book, but after I finished reading it, it is one of my favorite books of all time.
A character named Marisol impacted John’s character development significantly. Part of this story was of John trying to meet Marisol because he had read her writing and thought she was a pretty cool person. Marisol is a “Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee lesbian” who is not a fan of lying at all. John admired Marisol so much that when they met he felt guilty for lying to her about his name, and he lied about his name to impress her! At the beginning of this book, John didn’t really care about his life, but when it he met Marisol and became her friend he decided to turn his life around and start caring about his feelings.
I really liked how the author wrote Hard Love after a song. This just shows that the author had a deep level of understanding of that song and was able to connect with it from other experiences. I believe that this author was at one point a musician or someone who loves music (who doesn’t?) so that she would be able to understand it. Also, maybe the author had tough times in the past or knew others who had tough times. Nonetheless, the book does relate to the song, and it shows that the author really does know what hard love feels like.
The main problem of this book is that John does fall in love with Marisol, but Marisol is a lesbian and is not interested in that kind of relationship with John. I inferred in this book that John would fall in love with Marisol, but when Marisol made it very clear to John that she was a lesbian, I totally ditched that idea. This book is kind of sad to me because the problem never really gets solved, and John just has to live with Marisol not loving him back that way, especially after all that he’s been through.
I thought it interesting how John and Marisol met each other and got to be friends. John’s plan of finding Marisol at the Tower Records was strange since Marisol would have no idea who the heck John was and would feel just a bit uneasy. But after they talked about their writing they were great friends that understood each other through their writing. I love how people who have the gift of writing know a language only writers know and writers can connect through that special language.
One of my favorite parts of the book is definitely the most hilarious part of the book. It is the part where John reads Marisol’s writing, which is about insults in “Shakespearean language”. One of them is, “Thou beslubbering fen-sucked canker-blossom”. I think that one of the reasons why John likes Marisol so much is that she is very funny and fun to be around, as this example shows. It is amazing how through writing John wanted to become friends with Marisol.
The quote that I chose was:
“I am immune to emotion. I have been ever since I can remember. Which is helpful when people appeal to my sympathy. I don’t seem to have any.”
I chose this quote for several reasons. First, it shows how John started out in the story, and how much he changed his feelings by the end of the story. By the end, John cares much more about life and his feelings. Second, it shows how much John has been hurt by the divorce of his parents. John has obviously not been happy about the divorce, but in the story he will not admit that it hurts him that bad. He says that everyone else goes through divorce. It also explains why John is not comfortable writing about his emotions and feelings. He just wants to hide them and bottle them up.
I definitely recommend this book to you, because I loved it so much! I am so surprised on how much I liked this book since I didn’t believe it would be that great. I really liked how this was a more of a book on feelings instead of science fiction and gory and bloody stuff. It was a change from books with a lot of suspense. I hope you read it and enjoy it as much as I did!
Sincerely,
Emma Georgeff J
