The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [122]
Spend some time discussing Adam’s and Miranda’s marriages and families, both their families of birth and the ones they have created. Was Miranda fair to her parents, in keeping her distance from them? Why did she feel much closer to Adam’s mother than her own? What does it mean that one of the reasons she married Yonatan was because he was so unlike Adam? Is the same true for Adam, in regard to both Beverly and Clare? What do you think about him having known Clare since she was thirteen? What parts do Adam’s and Miranda’s children, all four of them, and their siblings, Rob and Jo, play in the narrative?
Regret is a running thread throughout the novel. Do you think Adam and Miranda feel equal regret for their actions? What do you make of the section in which Miranda says “In order to have had the children we have, we had to lead our lives exactly as we did. Therefore, there can be no regrets” [this page] and Adam responds in part by asking “Would it have been better if my son had not been born?” [this page]. As someone with or without children, how would you react to their discussion?
Adam slept with Beverly twice and believed she was on birth control. Miranda slept with Toby and never told Adam. Adam’s betrayal is assumed by both to be much greater. Why is that the case? Do you believe Miranda when she thinks, but does not say, “I too am guilty of lying, by omission” [this page]? Does Miranda believe that she has betrayed Adam? Do their actions bear greater weight because they were each other’s first sexual relationship? When Miranda sleeps with Toby, is the greater betrayal the infidelity of the body or the emotional infidelity of the secret? For Adam, was he betrayed equally by Beverly, or should he assume all responsibility for her pregnancy? What do you make of the scene in which Miranda cuts off her hair, and Adam feels betrayed? “What have you done to me?” [this page] Adam asks, to which Miranda replies with the voice of a generation, “To you? I thought it was my hair. My body” [this page].
Miranda remarks that “forgiveness is irrelevant now because the pain he caused her is long gone and, painless, forgiveness is not difficult, therefore perhaps not worth much” [this page]. When considering how she has hurt other people, Miranda says, “We can forgive those who trespass against us. We can’t forgive those we’ve trespassed against” [this page]. What does it mean to forgive someone? Is there a need to forgive one’s self? What do you make of Adam’s dismissal of Miranda’s confession that she slept with Toby? “Me? I forgive you? It is I who need forgiveness” [this page]. Do you think that Miranda truly forgives Adam? Does Adam forgive himself?
Miranda has converted to Judaism, while Adam stays an unbelieving Catholic—“I don’t have it, the ear for faith” [this page]—though as a teenager he believed that sleeping with Miranda put him in a state of sin. Is faith an active element in either Adam’s or Miranda’s life? Is it perhaps expressed not through religious faith, but through their perspectives on the purpose of their lives? Or through some other outlet?
Adam’s and Miranda’s definitions of what constitutes an ethical and worthy life are different—his music, her saving the world—a divide that began in their youth, and remains their guide to how they see the world. Levi says to Adam, “The question must be not only why do we live but what do we live for? And one of the most important answers, Adam, you must believe me about this, is for beauty. For beauty whose greatness goes on and on” [this page]. Adam believes that his musical gift is the way in which he must “make some kind of mark” [this page], to “create beauty” [this page], while Miranda wants to “relieve suffering” [this page]. In the end, Adam “has not achieved fame, success, even, but he has not given over his calling” [this page]. Do you think Miranda feels the same way about her work? Does either of them deeply value what the other does, or even understand the other’s work? What is your own definition of