Lost in the Spanish Quarter

July 1, 2019
A coming-of-age novel about falling in love and what happens next. Years removed from college, Heddi, an American living abroad, receives an email from Pietro, her first true love. Goodrich's debut novel, which she wrote in Italian and translated herself into English, juxtaposes emails between the ex-lovers with Heddi's memories of studying in Naples. Full of cigarette smoke, homemade pasta, and sun-kissed youth, Heddi lives in a rickety old building in the Spanish Quarter. Naples--an aging city full of life, love, and danger--is a fully drawn character: the eye-watering smog; the domestic disputes that spill over into courtyards; the smells of cooking wafting into the streets. Heddi and Pietro's love blossoms fast--a shared bed becomes a shared apartment becomes a shared life. The novel renders first love in all its lust, beauty, and heartache. The relationship comes alive through small details, as when Heddi describes Pietro's habits: "the courteous way he always put down grocery bags, like he was afraid to bruise the pears." The couple dreams about getting married and traveling the globe after graduation. In their insular world, they are unable to see the things threatening to tear them apart: duty, sickness, and cultural differences. Goodrich is a talented writer and keen observer. In one scene, Heddi looks out the window and notices: "It was still early and the neighborhood was making only muffled little noises as soft as slippers." Unfortunately, the novel tends to meander and becomes overcrowded with similes; too many pretty comparisons end up undercutting the beauty of Goodrich's prose. That being said, the novel soars when describing youth--and the loss of it: "Our fears only increased our pleasure, for, though we were already adults, we were experiencing a moment of teenage desperation that soon we wouldn't have to have--or get to have--ever again." A portrait of first love, nostalgia, and regret that sometimes sags under its own weight.

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September 1, 2019

DEBUT Oh, to be young, in college, in love, and living abroad. In this debut novel, Goodrich explores these experiences through her main character, also named Heddi. The story begins with an email from Heddi's first love, Pietro. It's been four years since they broke up, and he writes to apologize. The story moves back and forth between Heddi's time in Naples as an American studying languages and her present-day life in New Zealand, and there's a standard structure of girl meets boy, girl deals with boy's family, girl and boy break up, and girl and boy move on with their lives. What sets the book apart is the role played by the Spanish Quarter, a neighborhood in Naples. The reader feels the heat, hears the sounds, smells the food, and becomes entranced. VERDICT By focusing on Heddi's relationship with Neapolitan language and culture, the book is similar to Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station in suggesting that while immersion in a different environment can be challenging, it facilitates growth and change. While the narrative could have used some tightening and more editing, it will appeal to students and adults interested in all that college, first love, and new experiences bring to one's life.--Jacqueline Snider, Toronto

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019
Hanging out with friends late one night, 23-year-old linguistics student Heddi meets a handsome admirer bearing two gifts. He gives her a mixtape, and pronounces her name as she grew up hearing it in the U.S., with an h, instead of Eddie, as she's been called since moving to Naples, Italy as a teen. Heddi's rapid fall into all-consuming love for Pietro, a geology student with deep roots in nearby farmland, is this book's emotional center of gravity, and emails between the two, exchanged a few years later, propel the present-day plot even as it later lags. Despite her undisputed love and the ancient-feeling surroundings, Heddi senses a creeping precariousness, which Goodrich skillfully depicts in widening fissures, both literal and metaphorical, with almighty Vesuvius looming over it all. American-born, New Zealand-based Goodrich, who herself studied in Naples for much of her young adulthood, wrote this book in Italian (already a best-seller) before translating it into English. Readers intrigued by this impressive tidbit should pick the novel up for its and Heddi's fixation on all that language can encompass.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)