La Vita Nuova by Allegra Goodman, 2010
The magic trick:
Referencing specific real places in Boston
We have a weekly double of Allegra Goodman stories for you this week. The two stories, though published 13 years apart, feel very related. Today’s feature has a young woman at the heart of the story. In the first sentence, we learn that her fiancé has recently left her. In tomorrow’s feature – “The Last Grownup” – the protagonist is reckoning with the aftermath of her husband leaving her. So, it’s not some amazing insight on my part to pair these two stories. Still, it makes for an interesting week on the SSMT site.
“La Vita Nuova” references real places in Boston and Cambridge. Familiar landmarks, yes, but also specific streets and locales. Having been born in Boston and with family still living there, it particularly resonates to me. But I’d imagine it firms up the setting to any reader. This is a Boston story.
So when the titular text by Dante is referenced – explaining that the trick to becoming a great poet is to fall in love with the perfect girl but never speak to her – it is easy to assume that this points toward our protagonist’s possible fling with the father of the boy she’s babysitting this summer – and a possible motherly role of that child.
Yes, maybe. But I think the specificity of the Boston references make it a story about forgoing a possible life in the city.
And that’s quite a trick on Goodman’s part.
The selection:
They ate chocolate mice at Burdick’s and then they stood in front of the Harvard Coop and listened to Peruvian musicians. They explored the cemetery, and Amanda told Nathaniel that the gravestones were dragons’ teeth. They walked down to the river and she said, “If you trace the river all the way to the beginning, you’ll find a magic cave.” They took the T to Boston and stood in line for the swan boats in the Public Garden. She said, “At night, these boats turn into real swans.”
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