The Love of My Youth
by Mary Gordon
(Pantheon, $26)
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The protagonists of Mary Gordon’s latest novel are first loves who meet again in Rome after 40 years, said Judith Gillespie in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. On daily walks through the city, Adam and Miranda, both happily married, discuss the “what ifs” of their lost relationship, the answers to which will be “familiar to persons of a certain age.” Gordon creates dialogue between the pair that can be profound but is “often boorish,” while the flashbacks to their youth are consistently engaging.
Say Her Name
by Francisco Goldman
(Grove, $24)
Francisco Goldman had been married to his much younger wife for just two years when a rogue wave broke her neck while she was swimming in Mexico, said Karen R. Long in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Goldman’s very real grief provides the backbone for this fictionalized account of his life with Aura Estrada, an aspiring writer and a brilliant, petulant, funny woman. Goldman’s heartbreaking story, told in beautiful prose, has “serious pull,” and readers will be “glad and grateful” to have gotten to know Estrada. “She is unforgettable.”
Come to the Edge
by Christina Haag
(Spiegel & Grau, $25)
Christina Haag’s “wistful memoir” is a remembrance of her five-year relationship with a young John F. Kennedy Jr., said Jessica Gelt in the Los Angeles Times. Haag, who dated Kennedy in the 1980s, “doesn’t bow to tabloid sensationalism.” Instead, she “gently dusts off her tender, aching memories and bravely holds them to the light.” Despite a few passages that “drip with sap,” Come to the Edge effectively captures both a world of privilege and “the passion of young love.”
The Uncoupling
by Meg Wolitzer
(Riverhead, $26)
Meg Wolitzer’s “charming novel about love gone stale” imagines an impromptu “sex strike” by the women of a New Jersey suburb, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. When the high school’s drama teacher mounts a production of an Aristophanes comedy about women who withhold sex to protest the Peloponnesian War, a cold wind blows through the town’s bedrooms. Wolitzer doesn’t wring deep insights from this mysterious spell, but it allows her to provide “witty commentary on the challenge of keeping romance alive.”
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