The first paragraph of Philip Roth’s first book, a career begins, resoundingly. It evokes youth, beauty, hope — mostly hope of love. All are embodied in Brenda, the cool, self-assured water nymph. But this naiad wears glasses, and her last name turns out to be Patimkin. That she is a mere vulnerable human like us all, with her virtues and flaws, deepens her appeal. I felt that appeal when I first read the book, as a teenager. Now, rereading it many years later, I felt it again.It is Neil who is given the honor of holding Brenda’s glasses, and it is he who tells the story. He does so with a bright clarity — the youthful Roth’s prose has a freshness to it, an original snap — as in Brenda’s cheeky catching of the bottom of her suit and flicking “what flesh had been showing back where it belonged.” Goodbye, Columbus spans one summer. And no more. The fervent glow of love that Roth captures so well does not survive the complexities of life.