Trying Hard to Hear You

I loved 'Happy Endings Are All Alike' when I was a teenager, so now I am a grown-up who can buy things from Amazon I picked this up. It's a similar book - teenage page-turning angst, two boys in love in a drama club, the way the other kids are cruel to them because of this.

There are lots of things I probably wouldn't have picked up on reading it as a teenager - the irritating unselfaware voice of the first person teenage narrator, the really heavy handed foreshadowing that there will be Tragedy...

I guess the main thing that's strange about reading this book in the Future, where I have a nice relaxed liberal social circle and gay marriage is legal, is the strange tension in it. On one hand, it's selling a 'love is love and gay people are show more just normal people who should be allowed to love, and people who persecute them are arses' message. But on the other hand there is the huge trope of 'if people find out you are gay your friends will try to torture you and then you will Die Tragically' that is probably less helpful and supportive than we think it was, and has probably been overdone with hindsight, and this book is a prime example of it. show less

I read this book back in High School and it always stayed with me. I finally bought a copy and re-read it, I was worried it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it but it was. This is definitely one of my favorite books.

"As long as people love instead of hate, what difference does it make who they love?"

Altro tuffo nell'infanzia, questo decisamente meno riuscito. La protagonista mi è risultata abbastanza irritante e i temi sono trattati come li trattano le serie americane dello stile Dawson Creek e simili.
Il tutto in generale dava quell'impressione di americanità, intendo cioè tutti i luoghi comuni sulla vita liceale di cui sono intrisi serie tv e film.

Faced with the revelation that her best friend is a homosexual, a sixteen-year-old tries to cope with her own and her friends' reactions toward him.