The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [123]
Do you recognize yourself in any of the characters, particularly with regards to Adam and Miranda, and their spouses, children, or parents? If so, in what ways are you similar, and to what extent do you differ?
Adam and Miranda discuss ideas of belief, age, self-identity, beauty, and what it means to live a moral life, among other issues. Gordon is an author who covers these concepts in compelling and complicated ways, in both her fiction and nonfiction. Have you read any of her other books? How do themes of faith, family, love, and redemption operate here and elsewhere in her work?
The final words in the novel are Adam’s, as he mirrors Miranda’s about being grateful to “These trees. This light” [this page]. These images, based in the natural world, refer in part to two losses—Miranda’s father, her estrangement from him and the way she is able to miss him through the trees he taught her to name; and Adam’s loss of Beverly, or perhaps more truthfully, Beverly’s inability to exist in the world (her suicide note: “it’s too dark for me” [this page]). Why do you think Gordon chose to close The Love of My Youth with these words, and a focus on gratefulness? What was your emotional experience of these final lines, and of the novel as a whole?
Further Reading
E. M. Broner, The Red Squad
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
Tony Judt, The Memory Chalet
Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth
Sigrid Nunez, The Last of Her Kind
Richard Russo, That Old Cape Magic, The Big Chill
About the Author
Mary Gordon is the author of six previous novels, including Final Payments, Spending, and Pearl; the memoirs TheShadow Man and Circling My Mother; The Stories of Mary Gordon (winner of the Story Prize); and the recent non fiction work Reading Jesus. She has received many honors, among them a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1997 O. Henry Award for Best Story, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.
www.marygordon.net
www.pantheonbooks.com
ALSO BY MARY GORDON
AVAILABLE FROM
PANTHEON AND ANCHOR
IN EBOOK FORMAT
Circling My Mother • 978-0-307-47279-3
Final Payments • 978-0-307-48482-6
Pearl • 978-0-375-42358-1
Reading Jesus • 978-0-307-37859-0
The Stories of Mary Gordon • 978-0-307-49138-1
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
Contents
Map
October 7, 2007
Monday, October 8
Tuesday, October 9
Wednesday, October 10
Thursday, October 11
Friday, October 12
Saturday, October 13
Sunday, October 14
September 1964
Monday, October 15
Tuesday, October 16
Wednesday, October 17
Thursday, October 18
Friday, October 19
Saturday, October 20
Sunday, October 21
September 1967
Monday, October 22
Tuesday, October 23
Wednesday, October 24
Thursday, October 25
Friday, October 26
Saturday, October 27
Sunday, October 28
September 1970
Monday, October 29
Tuesday, October 30
Wednesday, October 31
A Reader’s Guide
About the Author