The Love of My Youth: A Novel

Editorial Reviews

Review The Love of My Youth 'Virtuoso and versatile Gordon offers brilliantly fresh takes on family conflicts, women's lives, war, and global suffering while ingeniously meshing classic love stories with modern mores, and ecstasy with wisdom, to create an enthralling drama of innocent passion, crushing tragedy, and the careful construction of stable, nurturing lives.' --Booklist (starred review)

The Stories of Mary Gordon 'A gifted chameleon... She brings myriad voices directly and faithfully to the page.' --The New York Times Book Review

'Carefully drawn and gracefully written, [Gordon's] stories combine the intimacy of memoir with the shape and narrative energy of fiction... Vivid and richly imagined.' --Chicago Sun-Times

'Breathtaking... Voluptuous.' --Los Angeles Times

'Remarkable... Gordon is a writer of profound imagination and empathy.' --The Boston Globe

Pearl 'A demanding and rewarding brainy-brawny novel that complicates our understanding of the world instead of coarsening it, that seasons the senses.' --The New York Times Book Review

'Crystalline and energetic... The sharp intellect the author brings to all her books is here in spades.' --Houston Chronicle

'Superb... Beautifully realized... Both an exploration of mother-daughter dynamics and an exploration of faith... It is Gordon writing at her best.' --The Seattle Times

Product Description

From the acclaimed author of Pearl and Final Payments comes a beautifully choreographed novel about first lovers meeting again after more than thirty years and reimmersing themselves in their shared past.

Miranda and Adam, high-school sweethearts now in their late fifties, arrive by chance at the same time in Rome, a city where they once spent a summer deeply in love, living together blissfully. At an awkward reunion, the two--who parted in an atmosphere of passionate betrayal in the 1960s and haven't seen each other since--are surprised to discover that they may have something to talk about. Both have their own guilt, their sense of who betrayed whom, and their long-held interpretation of the events that caused them not to marry and to split apart into the lives they've led since--both are married to others, with grown children. For the few weeks they are in Rome, Adam suggests that they meet for daily walks and get to know each other again. Gradually, as they take in the pleasures of the city and the drama of its streets, they discover not only what matters to them now but also more about what happened to them long ago.

Miranda and Adam are masterfully portrayed characters, intent upon understanding who they are in relation to who they were. A story about what first love means and how it is shattered, and the lessons old lovers may still have to share with each other many years later, The Love of My Youth is also a poignant look back at the hopes and dreams of a generation and what became of them.