Mark Hardy

Nothing Pink is a pretty straight forward coming out story. That said, it's a very well done coming out story. Vincent does a lot of struggling within himself, with the help of his strict Baptist upbringing, about his sexuality. He does everything he can to try to change himself including making out with girls, avoiding TV shows featuring guys in tight pants, and a whole lot of praying. But this is not the focus of the book. This all happens before the book starts, though it is alluded to show more throughout the beginning. The book actually starts on the day things start to get better, the day Vincent meets Robert. Even though Vincent still has doubts about the morality of his relationship with Robert and has to hide the extent of their relationship from his parents, this is mostly a happy book about Vincent's first love and eventual acceptance of himself.

A lot of Vincent's happiness with himself hinges on religion, or rather, God. His relationship with God factors largely into Vincent's life and the story. Vincent is moved by his father's sermons, hymns, and prayer. He acutely feels God's presence in his life. He is a devout and upstanding Christian, except for his sexuality. That's why he's so confused and hurt by God's lack of response to his prayers to be straight. As he becomes more comfortable with Robert and his relationship with him, he becomes more convinced that God is okay with it too. It's great. His parents, however, do not agree. When they figure out what's going on, they give him a talking-to that centers around this oft heard sentiment:

"We love you, Vincent...But God hates the sin of homosexuality, so we must hate it too, son."
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To their credit, they never say that God hates Vincent, and they stress that they love him unconditionally, though Vincent doubts that their version of "unconditional" should count when they hate something that is so much a part of him. I did get the feeling that the mom, at least, would come around at some point after the end of the book.

During the talk with his parents and later when he is at church camp, Vincent does a lot of defending himself. In his own head. I love that he didn't have to stand up and be out and and proud right away or a spokesperson/defender of all people queer in his Baptist community. Sometimes that's all you can do, and it's great that Hardy provides this positive role model of someone who can only hold it together for himself but is still not weak. Outwardly, Vincent simply stops asking God to make him straight. Internally, he does a lot of building himself up, and that involves a lot of "God-talk." The religious over tones and general message of God loves the gays becomes a bit redundant and heavy-handed toward the end. This is definitely not a book for readers uncomfortable with Christianity. I appreciated the message, but it did kind of take over the book in a couple of places and pull me out of Vincent's story. But given how heavy-handed much of the anti-gay, religious literature can be, I had to forgive this repeated positive religious message.

Also, and this surprised me a bit, the book is set in the 70s. It's not overly obvious and so led to some confusing moments for me, such as when Vincent lists the TV shows he avoids and its clear that I should have recognized the titles. Other than that, only the feathered hair and continual Barry Manilow references tipped me off (and the title verso, which is where I got the actual decade of the setting from). And I do mean continual, with the Barry Manilow. You'll be singing Copa Cabana for days after reading this one.

Book source: Philly Free Library show less

The last YA novel I read was by Caroline B Cooney. It was part of her vampire series and I read it in 5th grade. It was for a book report and I even made a diorama. The walls of the shoe box was covered with stones I found around my neighborhood. I made a bed out of cotton balls and Q-tips. I told my class that this was where the vampire lured teenage girls. "To do what?" "I don't know. Use your imagination, but it has to be bad."

YA novels have ever since been a blur of vampires and show more sometimes werewolves. The success of the Twilight Saga has reinforced that, and then everything after that (the vampire avalanche, I call it), confirmed it.

Reading Mark Hardy's debut was not like that. There were not vampires, not even a gay one. Indeed, Hardy's novel explored the coming of age story of Vincent Harris, during the summer of his coming out in the 1970s. While there are a slew of gay YA novels about coming out, this one has a slight twist: Vincent's a pastor's son, which probably stemmed from Hardy's own life. Raised in Virginia (also the book's setting), he too is a preacher's son. But as his biography states, that's where the similarities end.

Hardy grew up, became a teacher, and now writes (He was a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer). Vincent on the other hand, is bound forever in the present tense. By the end of the novel he comes out out to his parents, falls in love, and goes to church camp, but the beauty of this novel is that we do not know what happens afterwards, not really. We just have the present of Vincent's life.

In that way, reading Nothing Pink is like memory. Any adult (any queer adult) reading this will instantly conjure up memories of his/her coming out. How it was for them: the struggle of identity, that instant of recognition in another queer person, and of course porn. The novel unravels like memory. Even though its a scant 100 or so pages, some scenes are beautifully rendered in a slowness that in other hands might have just ended up muddled and slow. But in Hardy's voice, the slowness of the scene is part of the reminsicing, part of the tone. And the wording is simply beautiful. For example, take this scene from the beginning of the book:

"I sink in the tub until only my knees and neck and head remain out of water. Now that my shoulders are immerse I realize how cold the air is and how chilly things are with my mother.

She puts the magazine down on the counter and picks up the dental floss. She tears off a long piece of it and wraps one end around each pointer finger, then watches herself wrap and wrap until the floss between her two fingers is perfect length.

She's waiting for me to go next, to explain my lie."

Hardy's prose is full of precision more akin to a short story writer than a novelist. His observations--its pacing and its silences--are packed with keen observations and loaded with meaning the same way our memories play in slow motion and then we finally understand why, what, and who we are.

Yet it is precisely this that makes Hardy's novel less of a YA novel, and more of a novel about a teenager. The fact that it takes place in the 70s begs the question: can today's youth can relate to this? This is especially the question when Hardy alludes to Tom of Finland and First Hand and even eight tracks. (I personally didn't even hear of Tom of Finland until I was in college and visited a gay bookstore in DC; First Hand is new to me; I don't know what an eight track is, I just know it's very old).

But perhaps this is just my interpretation of it as an adult (albeit a younger one). The only inkling that this might be geared specifically towards YA readers is near the end when Vincent contemplates God and God's meanings and purpose. Any queer adult would probably understand it already, but perhaps for younger readers, this is the crux and ephiphany of the novel. To older readers, however ,it just seems didatical and slow, in a bad way.

Overall, Hardy's debut is strong and poetic. He paints characters as whole people, not just caricatures. His gay teens not only contemplate God, but about boys and Barry Manilow. His religious fanatics are less fanatics, than parents trying to navigate their child's world (Chapter 9 is heart breaking!) His prose and style flows like memory and is bound to please adults as well as teenagers (perhaps even more so).

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At first glance this seems like another "problem novel" about a gay teenager with a disapproving Christian family. But what I liked about this book is that rather than rejecting religion entirely, at the end, the main character figures that if God wanted him to be straight, it would have happened already, so God must love him the way he is. I bet there are some kids out there who would benefit from a book that says you don't have to choose between spirituality and sexuality.

This was hard to read even though it was a page turner. To see a young man with the amount of self hate Vincent had was striking to me. The book is set in the late 70's and at that time there was still a massive amount of stigma towards homosexuality. On top of all that, Vincent grew up the son of a Baptist minister and that must have been amazingly hard.
The way I saw Vincent early on in the book was as someone who was living a life that was on both sides of the spectrum. He is gay but at show more the same time his religious up bringing tells him he is filthy and going to hell. He was a person divided. This all changes after he meets another homosexual boy, Robert. To compound the matter even further his mother finds an erotic magazine in his room and both of his parents are so adamantly against him bring homosexual that they actually try to force the demons out of him.
All of this is strikingly in contrast to when we see Vincent and his mother interact on certain occasions. When they are alone you can almost see his mother let down her "guard." She is almost acceptant of his "gayness" in a few screens.
By the end of the book Vincent is a man transformed. He is now at one with himself and no longer believes homosexuality is a bad thing. God has told him that he likes him just the way God intended him to be. Which is the most powerful message in this book. show less