"The Love of My Youth"

I remember discovering Mary Gordon’s work when she published her first novel, “Final Payments,” in 1978; what a jolt of originality that novel was, and all her succeeding novels, stories, and nonfiction have been! So of course when I saw she had a new novel out this year, I found and read it. “The Love of My Youth” (Pantheon, 2011) tells the story of Miranda and Adam, who were the loves of each other’s lives during high school and college, until a great betrayal took place. While they were together, they spent one glorious summer in Rome; they now meet in Rome again, by chance, some 35 years later. They are each happily married now, with children. Wary of but drawn to each other, they spend three weeks walking, seeing the sights, sitting at cafes, and –- most of all –- talking. Gradually they relearn about each other. The novel goes back and forth between Miranda’s and Adam’s past and present together. This novel is a love letter to young love, as well as to the city of Rome, whose light and beauty is described in gorgeous detail. But to me -- probably influenced by being about the same age as the protagonists -- this novel is most of all about our relationships with our pasts. How did we get to this stage in our lives? What is our relationship now with the people we were all those years ago -- years that seem long and at the same time fleeting? How would our lives be different now if we had done this instead of that, been with this person instead of that one, moved to this city instead of that one? What happens when our pasts and presents collide? Have we kept the intensity of feelings we had about those dramatic and intense times in our lives -- especially the years of late adolescence and young adulthood? Or have we mellowed, moved beyond them, even let them go, as we have gone on to live our adult lives in predictable and unpredictable ways? “The Love of My Youth” brings all these questions to the fore.