![]() ![]() ![]() In Good Will, the reader is introduced to Robert, Elizabeth and Thomas Miller. In her mind, she thinks that “however my life looks to others, what it looks like to me is a child’s tower of blocks, built in ignorance and without a plan.” Her children both love and resent her for not being the mother they needed her to be. Looking back over the 20 years since the divorce, Rachel is trying to come to terms with herself and how her actions impacted her children who are now grown, some with families of their own. He divorces her and takes their children (ages 5-10) overseas to live in England, which shakes her to her core. At the age of 32 her life changed forever when she confesses to her husband that she has been having an affair. At 14 years old she carried a list of places she had to see before she died and sought out her dreams. In Ordinary Love, the narrator is a 52-year old mother of five children, who by nature was an adventurer. Although the stories are very different, the reader can’t help but see the long-lasting and indelible effects on the children of adults who don’t think about their behavior and consequences, who think of themselves first, who can’t control their urges, and who are often in denial. Jane Smiley, Pulitzer prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres published Ordinary Love & Good Will – two short stories that explore the effects that people’s actions have on their children – in 1989. But it is not necessarily the ones you love the most that have the most effect on you. ![]()
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