(courtesy Hachette Australia)
I am not a huge fan of saying goodbye.
Oh, I will always front up and do because I am far too sentimental not to, and I will fully lean into the feelings which usually intensely heartbreaking (if you love the person, how can they not be?), but would I prefer they never happen, like any sane person with a beating heart.
Absolutely, yes; so it was with a very heavy heart that I opened up the final instalment in the graphic novel phenomenon that is Heartstopper by Alice Oseman, Volume 6 and began reading, knowing that when I reached the end of the heftier than usual issue that that would be that. (Well, except for the forthcoming movie and retrospective special so almost that, I guess?)
It has been a long, beautiful and heartwarmingly honest journey with Charlie and Nick who, over two years of bumps in the road and a lot of soaring highs, have forged the kind of relationship that is the envy of their friends around them, many of whom are queer and happily defy mainstream society’s very narrow idea of what love actually is.
And that, especially for those of us who grew in less enlightened ages (though this one is doing its level conservative best to turn back the clock with a vengeance) is such an unalloyed joy and a comfort, a reminder that while “love is love” has been bandied about with a fiercely rabid frequency to the point where it risked losing all meaning, it still has potency for real-world, life-changing impact.
The kind that can change the life of someone grappling during their coming of age years with the fact that they are queer, that they don’t tick any of the heteronormative boxes and that maybe, just maybe, who they are is perfectly normal, perfectly lovely and just what the world, and that special someone they will hopefully one day love, needs.
Oseman captures what that awakening feels like, and how, while there are lots of sigh-worthy fairytale-level romantic trimmings and queer love given full, reassuring voice, it does come without considerable bumps in the road.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest in Heartstopper Volume 6 is that Nick is a year ahead of Charlie at Truham secondary school and that soon and very soon, much sooner than either of them would like, he will go off to uni in Leeds (it’s hoped) and they will have to see if the bond they have can survive all that distance and separation.
They both want to think it can, but with Charlie far more confident, even to the point of nominating to be Headboy (like a school captain in the Australian context, I think) and “fit”, and Nick still feeling like no one will love them unless he is the perfect embodiment of what they need (in his and Charlie’s case, a model boyfriend), there are racks appearing in the seamless wonder and now sex-filled joy of their close bond.
A bond that Nick’s delightfully supportive mother says, in one sweetly comforting scene, is precious and unique and though Nick is too young to know this, something most people never have as their own.
So, you have to hope that they, unlike Tao and Elle who are looking shaky (though they love each other still) and Tara and Darcy (shaky but you get the feeling they will right themselves), will somehow transition from being teenagers in love to adult men in love and that their love will be the one to last the ages.
Told over a year like the other instalment, Volume 6 is anchored by a strong sense that Nick and Charlie, for all the contradictory, swirling and future-nervous emotions swirling around them like a raging storm, LOVE each other.
If you have been blessed to know such a love, and this reviewer is thankful he has and is living it with the best and most kindest man any guy could ask for, you will recognise straight away that what Charlie and Nick have will absolutely last beyond the back-and-forth, up-and-down uncertainty of the teenage years.
That’s why they are such a joy to read about – you feel like whatever is wrong with the world, Nick and Charlie will somehow not just survive it but thrive.
Charlie may still need to see his therapist when he lapses a little with his eating disorder and Nick may struggle mightily with the legacy of a coldly selfish dad, and a resulting estranged brother and desperate-to-please sense of self that he can’t express to Charlie’s dismay, but their love, though they don’t know it yet, can go the distance, riding all the bumps and soaring over the obstacles, come what may.
That doesn’t mean to say it won’t hurt nor that they won’t come close to founding on the stormy rocks of life, all which comes close to happening in big and small ways in Volume 6, but real love, true love, the kind that daffy priests intone about in The Princess Bride, somehow keeps going if you tend it, if you are honest about what you’re feeling and you give what you have room and time to grow and change around you.
That happens to Nick and Charlie, with their book of memories, which Charlie looks through towards the end of Volume 6 just before he and Nick head out onto the latter’s campus to live the rest of what you know will be a charmed if typically challenging life, and you get the very strong sense that they will still be together a decade, two decades, a lifetime from now.
Will they be different? Will their love look different? YES and YES but that’s life with all its joys and connections, and this final part of the Heartstopper story strikes the right note beyond present nervousness about life holds and a quiet confidence that it will all be okay, and you know, you just know, that as Oseman says in her closing remarks, that Charlie and Nick will always be “hand in hand in a beach somewhere”.
It’s a beautiful picture of love enduring and it’s been our privilege and comforting joy to witness it and whatever happens next in an imagined life for Nick and Charlie, you know it will be good and that you, having been inspired by this story of true love with all the expected bumps and bruises, will be just fine too.
And that I think is the greatest gift of Volume 6 and the beautiful, brilliant, lovely Heartstopper series overall to which, I suspect we will say “farewell” but never “goodbye”.
Heartstopper Volume 6 is available from Hodder & Stoughton Limited; Heartstopper Forever releases 17 July on Netflix with a behind-the-scenes farewell special, Heartstopper: Ending on a Hi premiering 24 July.
