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Ordinary Love and Good Will
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres —and “one of her generation’s most eloquent chroniclers of ordinary familial love” ( The New York Times ) — comes two exquisite twin novellas that chronicle the difficult choices that reshape the lives of two very different families.
In Ordinary Love , Smiley focuses on a woman’s infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will portrays a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
In Ordinary Love , Smiley focuses on a woman’s infidelity and the lasting, indelible effects it leaves on her children long after her departure. Good Will portrays a father who realizes how his son has been affected by his decision to lead a counterculture life and move his family to a farm. As both stories unfold, Smiley gracefully raises the questions that confront all families with the characteristic style and insight that has marked all of her work.
208 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 1989
89 people are currently reading
1043 people want to read
About the author
Jane Smiley
133 books2,729 followersJane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar. From 1981 to 1996, she taught at Iowa State University. Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980, and won a 1985 O. Henry Award for her short story "Lily", which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. Her best-selling A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997. In 1995 she wrote her sole television script produced, for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005), is a non-fiction meditation on the history and the nature of the novel, somewhat in the tradition of E. M. Forster's seminal Aspects of the Novel, that roams from eleventh century Japan's Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji to twenty-first century Americans chick lit.
In 2001, Smiley was elected a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 179 reviews
April 25, 2013
“…I, too, have done the thing that I least wanted to do… I have given my children the two cruelest gifts I had to give, which are these, the experience of perfect family happiness, and the certain knowledge that it could not last.”
This quote from page 94 of Ordinary Love, one of two novellas making up Ordinary Love and Good Will, encapsulates a major theme of this virtuoso volume: parental love and the nearly impossible task of nurturing children fully as a flawed adult trying to remain true to your own journey.
However, though their themes are similar, these first-person narratives come at them from opposite directions: Ordinary Love from the vantage point of a mother, Rachel, who lost control of her young children (and even knowledge of their whereabouts) for years after confessing to her husband that she was having an affair; and Good Will from that of a father, Robert, who controlled almost every aspect of his family’s life by moving them off the grid to a self-sufficient farm.
Both stories build to an emotional crisis but, again, in opposite ways: Ordinary Love unfolds in a “spiral” fashion through emotional reveals; Good Will unfolds linearly, through physical events. The two protagonists wind up in different circumstances at the end of their respective stories—the mother united with her offspring in the home she loves; the father robbed of everything that gave his life meaning, save his wife and son—yet they reach similar conclusions, each coming to a chastened realization of the impact of their own limitations on their children. This opposite/same structure is interesting in and of itself. And what both novellas share, of course, are interesting, full-fledged characters and complex emotional insights, hallmarks of Smiley’s writing.
This quote from page 94 of Ordinary Love, one of two novellas making up Ordinary Love and Good Will, encapsulates a major theme of this virtuoso volume: parental love and the nearly impossible task of nurturing children fully as a flawed adult trying to remain true to your own journey.
However, though their themes are similar, these first-person narratives come at them from opposite directions: Ordinary Love from the vantage point of a mother, Rachel, who lost control of her young children (and even knowledge of their whereabouts) for years after confessing to her husband that she was having an affair; and Good Will from that of a father, Robert, who controlled almost every aspect of his family’s life by moving them off the grid to a self-sufficient farm.
Both stories build to an emotional crisis but, again, in opposite ways: Ordinary Love unfolds in a “spiral” fashion through emotional reveals; Good Will unfolds linearly, through physical events. The two protagonists wind up in different circumstances at the end of their respective stories—the mother united with her offspring in the home she loves; the father robbed of everything that gave his life meaning, save his wife and son—yet they reach similar conclusions, each coming to a chastened realization of the impact of their own limitations on their children. This opposite/same structure is interesting in and of itself. And what both novellas share, of course, are interesting, full-fledged characters and complex emotional insights, hallmarks of Smiley’s writing.
August 4, 2009
Go now and get this little book of novellas from Jane Smiley. It's only two stories and they just both knocked my teeth out (in a good way). Smiley's writing style is deceptively simple and straightforward and you start thinking, oh, okay, I know where this is going, it's all about family and loss and painful self-awareness, and then, BAM, she knocks your teeth out.
Here's a little bit from "Good Will": "It's still there when I come up to them, and maybe that's the problem. She is a slender child, with a nutty complexion, a high, smooth forehead, and large eyes in wide-apart, flaring sockets. That she is a beauty in the making is a fact so present that talking around it is like not referring to a visible handicap. . . . She is not pleased, and it is obvious that hers is the pleasure most often consulted. Click click, just like that, my dislike of the child is solid, in place, maybe even permanent."
Here's a little bit from "Good Will": "It's still there when I come up to them, and maybe that's the problem. She is a slender child, with a nutty complexion, a high, smooth forehead, and large eyes in wide-apart, flaring sockets. That she is a beauty in the making is a fact so present that talking around it is like not referring to a visible handicap. . . . She is not pleased, and it is obvious that hers is the pleasure most often consulted. Click click, just like that, my dislike of the child is solid, in place, maybe even permanent."
April 3, 2020
Siempre huyo de los libros de pocas páginas porque me da la sensación que no cuentan lo suficiente. Este no es el caso. Pocas páginas, mucha historia. Muy bueno.
July 10, 2021
Two novellas from the late 80s that I had never encountered before made for a quick but compelling read. The first is the story of a family far from ordinary in its experiences and complex in its love. The narrator is a woman in her fifties with five grown children. The focus is on three of them, twin sons 25 years old, one of whom is returned after 2 years in India, and an older daughter who has her own family to show as a parallel to her upbringing. Slowly, Smiley reveals the past of this family, the messy divorce and custody battle which shaped all of them into the people they have become. Realistically, I think these characters are a little too quick to tell each other what happened to them, but the story is so strong that I didn't mind that particular untruth.
Good Will is close to a perfect story. A man, his wife, and their 7-year-old son live off the grid, growing their own food and trading for almost every necessity. Its focus on farm life, wood working and sewing, the details of slaughtering lambs, hunting turkeys, and raising a new pony, are the stuff of nightmare to a city boy like me. But the depths of each character, slowly appearing as the story goes on across the space of a few months, and the relationships between them are as strongly delineated as anything I've read. There are gut punches in this story that are no less hard to take because they are inevitable in the manner of telling.
Good Will is close to a perfect story. A man, his wife, and their 7-year-old son live off the grid, growing their own food and trading for almost every necessity. Its focus on farm life, wood working and sewing, the details of slaughtering lambs, hunting turkeys, and raising a new pony, are the stuff of nightmare to a city boy like me. But the depths of each character, slowly appearing as the story goes on across the space of a few months, and the relationships between them are as strongly delineated as anything I've read. There are gut punches in this story that are no less hard to take because they are inevitable in the manner of telling.
June 19, 2023
parfois j'aime juste énormément lire des random livres que personne n'a vraiment lus et desquels je ne pourrai jamais parler avec personne parce que je me sens très grande et autonome et indépendante en les lisant comme la première fois que tu fais du vélo sans les petites roues ben là t'as ton cerveau sans les biais et les attentes et tu fais rouler ton esprit critique tout seul comme un grand tout ça pour dire y avait plein de trucs cool dans ce livre (la façon dont l'autrice te fait faire une attaque émotionnelle par la puissance d'une seule phrase) et d'autres trucs moins cool genre tout est un peu prévisible mais quelque part n'est-ce pas l'essence même de la vie send tweet
January 10, 2017
Smiley has an amazing way of describing human behavior that I don't usually consciously notice—how sometimes we can't say things to people's faces, how our movements affect others. The moment-by-moment dynamics of conversation between people in Ordinary Love really fascinated me. In the second novella, Good Will, the beauty of a confidently simple life entranced me, and even though I kept feeling a foreboding that some huge conflict must occur at some point, what happened really shocked me and broke my heart. Is it weird that I feel the consequences of the actions should have been different because the way they ended up seemed rewarding to the misconduct?
August 14, 2019
I don't have too much to say about these novellas. They're interesting portrayals of normal life, and the dichotomy between the two novellas, one being told from the point of view of a woman and the other being told from the point of view of a man, is nice... But there really wasn't anything that moved me or stood out at important or different. It was nicely written and a very easy read, but wholly underwhelming as a contemporary.
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April 19, 2018Not sure if I'll get into this. There's something disjointed about the story about the brother coming home. I feel like I'm missing something.
July 22, 2025
Jane Smiley is really good at writing racism from the perspectives she knows, but I usually find that her characters that are POC leave a little to be desired. On the other hand, the way she writes about white people and white supremacy is so skillful...her best white characters are ones that don't think of themselves as racists, genuinely try to be good people, but still uphold racist ideas in more subtle ways. This is something she has clearly studied a lot and I'm always impressed how she is able to deconstruct via depiction. Like I said though, her nonwhite characters aren't written terribly, but it's pretty clear to me that because the point of her stories is to analyze racism from a white perspective, the characterization of the POC in her books feel like a bit of an afterthought.
August 30, 2015
I’ve been debating whether to dive into Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy. It’s such a big commitment, following a multigenerational family from 1920 to 2019 through three long novels. And I really didn’t love A Thousand Acres, the novel that won her a Pulitzer. (Not because it was poorly conceived or written, by any means, just that the subject matter is pretty dark. It’s a tragedy, after all – her interpretation of King Lear.) But reading Ordinary Love and Good Will has me leaning toward making that leap. Smiley is a master, no doubt about it.
Ordinary Love and Good Will are two novellas, written and set in the mid-80s, though they don’t feel tied to that era. In Ordinary Love we meet Rachel, a 52-year-old mother of five adult children, three of whom happen to be home on the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of their once seemingly perfect, happy family. As they revisit the past, Rachel sees what follows her separation and divorce from the children’s perspective as she never has: “What they say creates a vast and complicated but vividly articulated new object in my mind, the history of my children in my absence, at the mercy of their father.”
Rachel realizes she has given her children “the two cruelest gifts I had to give, which are these, the experience of perfect family happiness, and the certain knowledge that it could not last.”
Good Will is told from the perspective of a father. Bob and his wife are raising their young son on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. They are fully self-sufficient, their lives self-contained – they grow their own food, spin and weave their own wool, make their own furniture. The family lives without a car, telephone or television, with no necessary connection to the outside world except their son’s schooling. Needless to say, things start to go awry and the family’s Eden is upended.
Both novellas end with a chastened narrator realizing the consequences of following their own desires. “The moral of all wish tales,” Bob says, “is that, though wishes express power or desire, their purpose is to reveal ignorance: the more fulfilled wishes, the more realized ignorance.”
One of the things I find most interesting and impressive about Jane Smiley is how she focuses super consciously on the form and function of her writing. (Maybe all writers do, but not so publicly? She consciously set out, for example, to write a novel in every genre, and has written award-winningly in just about every form too – from short stories to novellas to novels to nonfiction to screenplays. And her meticulously constructed new trilogy is a whole other thing.)
With Ordinary Love and Good Will, she told the NY Times, “I did set out to pair the point of view of a father with that of a mother. And I consciously constructed one of these novellas as a more masculine narrative – essentially linear – and the other as more feminine, in which things are hidden and then revealed. 'Ordinary Love' is like looking at a rose, where the form unfolds around the center.”
The novella form allows for a condensed, sharp focus on one theme that comes to a point in the way a short story does, but with more room to dive deep and explore around than a short story allows, while the length makes it easier to sustain our interest than a 400-page novel might. So the form serves her – and us – well. But it’s the power and perception of her writing that makes these two novellas together a work of art. It’s her wisdom and sympathy that make her work so very worthy of our time. I’m leaning toward yes on the trilogy.
Ordinary Love and Good Will are two novellas, written and set in the mid-80s, though they don’t feel tied to that era. In Ordinary Love we meet Rachel, a 52-year-old mother of five adult children, three of whom happen to be home on the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of their once seemingly perfect, happy family. As they revisit the past, Rachel sees what follows her separation and divorce from the children’s perspective as she never has: “What they say creates a vast and complicated but vividly articulated new object in my mind, the history of my children in my absence, at the mercy of their father.”
Rachel realizes she has given her children “the two cruelest gifts I had to give, which are these, the experience of perfect family happiness, and the certain knowledge that it could not last.”
Good Will is told from the perspective of a father. Bob and his wife are raising their young son on a farm in rural Pennsylvania. They are fully self-sufficient, their lives self-contained – they grow their own food, spin and weave their own wool, make their own furniture. The family lives without a car, telephone or television, with no necessary connection to the outside world except their son’s schooling. Needless to say, things start to go awry and the family’s Eden is upended.
Both novellas end with a chastened narrator realizing the consequences of following their own desires. “The moral of all wish tales,” Bob says, “is that, though wishes express power or desire, their purpose is to reveal ignorance: the more fulfilled wishes, the more realized ignorance.”
One of the things I find most interesting and impressive about Jane Smiley is how she focuses super consciously on the form and function of her writing. (Maybe all writers do, but not so publicly? She consciously set out, for example, to write a novel in every genre, and has written award-winningly in just about every form too – from short stories to novellas to novels to nonfiction to screenplays. And her meticulously constructed new trilogy is a whole other thing.)
With Ordinary Love and Good Will, she told the NY Times, “I did set out to pair the point of view of a father with that of a mother. And I consciously constructed one of these novellas as a more masculine narrative – essentially linear – and the other as more feminine, in which things are hidden and then revealed. 'Ordinary Love' is like looking at a rose, where the form unfolds around the center.”
The novella form allows for a condensed, sharp focus on one theme that comes to a point in the way a short story does, but with more room to dive deep and explore around than a short story allows, while the length makes it easier to sustain our interest than a 400-page novel might. So the form serves her – and us – well. But it’s the power and perception of her writing that makes these two novellas together a work of art. It’s her wisdom and sympathy that make her work so very worthy of our time. I’m leaning toward yes on the trilogy.
October 12, 2012
Jane's Terrain
See, this is what a good author can do, lead you from what you know so well you would never even notice it to the utter mystery of what you are, what your life is.
In Ordinary Love and Good Will, Smiley begins with a story of a homecoming, and we see a family working through the strains of reuniting with loved ones. The peculiar estrangements we feel when meeting people we once knew well, after an interlude of distance and vastly different experiences, form the emotional climate. And then, in that sort of ticking-bomb-way that family get-togethers have at Jane's house, an old, buried secret comes to light.
Smiley is an expert at examining the desire in life--you know, that big rock in your gut that nobody ever teaches you how to talk about, much less live with. The negotiation of duty and appetite creates the framework, or more, the vehicle of our travel, forward into the unfolding years, backwards into our puzzling pasts, down our familiar neighborhood streets to places from which we never come back. What seems the most surprising in the end, as always, is love--its power, its failing, what we love, that we love--if that's what it was, was that love?
In the second story, Smiley builds on these themes with a narrative that somehow enacts the limits of self-perception. This is an astounding piece of writing that presents a character living a disciplined and carefully controlled life off the grid, who in spite of his best efforts is unable to avoid the unscripted aspects of marriage, fatherhood, and self-awareness. He is a complex man, who builds things, who prides himself on seeing beauty in things, who comes to discover a beauty he has resisted, a way of being that is the only right relation to the inescapable grief of life.
I have always had a tendency to snub domestic fiction. My knee-jerk reaction to stories about families is a combination of boredom and claustrophobia. But in Smiley's capable hands, what seems at first mundane, ho-hum, becomes the jumping off point for journeys I seem ready now to make, into realms of hardship and adventure not sketched on any map, a territory known only as the human heart.
See, this is what a good author can do, lead you from what you know so well you would never even notice it to the utter mystery of what you are, what your life is.
In Ordinary Love and Good Will, Smiley begins with a story of a homecoming, and we see a family working through the strains of reuniting with loved ones. The peculiar estrangements we feel when meeting people we once knew well, after an interlude of distance and vastly different experiences, form the emotional climate. And then, in that sort of ticking-bomb-way that family get-togethers have at Jane's house, an old, buried secret comes to light.
Smiley is an expert at examining the desire in life--you know, that big rock in your gut that nobody ever teaches you how to talk about, much less live with. The negotiation of duty and appetite creates the framework, or more, the vehicle of our travel, forward into the unfolding years, backwards into our puzzling pasts, down our familiar neighborhood streets to places from which we never come back. What seems the most surprising in the end, as always, is love--its power, its failing, what we love, that we love--if that's what it was, was that love?
In the second story, Smiley builds on these themes with a narrative that somehow enacts the limits of self-perception. This is an astounding piece of writing that presents a character living a disciplined and carefully controlled life off the grid, who in spite of his best efforts is unable to avoid the unscripted aspects of marriage, fatherhood, and self-awareness. He is a complex man, who builds things, who prides himself on seeing beauty in things, who comes to discover a beauty he has resisted, a way of being that is the only right relation to the inescapable grief of life.
I have always had a tendency to snub domestic fiction. My knee-jerk reaction to stories about families is a combination of boredom and claustrophobia. But in Smiley's capable hands, what seems at first mundane, ho-hum, becomes the jumping off point for journeys I seem ready now to make, into realms of hardship and adventure not sketched on any map, a territory known only as the human heart.
June 23, 2021
I read these as a young woman when I first discovered Jane Smiley and enjoyed the novellas. I remembered more about Good Will, but this time I was more appreciative of the heroine of Ordinary Love, who is now about my age. Both stories are crafted so masterfully that I identified strongly with the main characters. I could understand the little cuts and punishments inflicted on the heroine in OL by her daughter. It reminded me of how we hurt those we love the most. The cerebral quality and single-minded purpose of the narrator in GW was fascinating. I could totally empathize with his drive to create and be self-sufficient. His lack of patience with his son and his desire to have his son behave a certain way to make him look good showed how single-minded he was in controlling his environment. There are tough themes in both novellas, but they make the stories stand out.
September 3, 2020
What a gem to find at GoodReads! Lush prose, good attention to landscape, and engaging characters. One of these novels is written from the POV of a woman and the other from a man's, and Smiley does an amazing job contrasting the perspective and inner life of both characters. Please read this! Packed with astute observations about life. Not the most plot-driven, but a page turner anyways.
May 9, 2021
Disappointingly stilted.
July 31, 2022
Rich, thoughtful, carefully structured and exquisitely written, these two novellas open a tiny window onto the souls of two specific people, through which we can see a vastness beyond.
The first, “Ordinary Love,” feels perhaps too mannered, though its characters come to life by its end and the revelations it presents are surprising and disturbing. It can feel difficult, though, to relate to people who so clearly have all they need.
“Good Will,” conversely, presents a wonderful trio of characters, a family living a most unusual life. Through superlative observations of daily life (so detailed they left me wondering how much of the writing was researched and how much was learned knowledge — that is, I found myself thinking about the author), a story meanders into place. It all leads to two events so stunning they genuinely took my breath away, and I found myself spellbound by both the narrative and the characters.
Both are worthy, but “Good Will” is astonishing.
The first, “Ordinary Love,” feels perhaps too mannered, though its characters come to life by its end and the revelations it presents are surprising and disturbing. It can feel difficult, though, to relate to people who so clearly have all they need.
“Good Will,” conversely, presents a wonderful trio of characters, a family living a most unusual life. Through superlative observations of daily life (so detailed they left me wondering how much of the writing was researched and how much was learned knowledge — that is, I found myself thinking about the author), a story meanders into place. It all leads to two events so stunning they genuinely took my breath away, and I found myself spellbound by both the narrative and the characters.
Both are worthy, but “Good Will” is astonishing.
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October 29, 2021La reseñé para Otra Parte Semanal: https://www.revistaotraparte.com/otra...
September 21, 2022
These stories of the complexity of domestic life and relationships pulled me in. Stayed up past my bedtime to finish.
March 8, 2010
I hesitate to give such an accomplished writer only two stars, but for my interests, the subjects of these two novellas were “just okay.” These books may hold greater appeal to those whose family lives are more similar to the protagonists’ (indeed, this book was suggested to me by a person with a very different life than my own).
There’s no doubt the writer beautifully crafts the intricacies of human emotion, such as in this passage from “Ordinary Love”:
A year went by, and I fell out of love with him, and another year went by, and another, and finally he moved away. In those three years I saw him from time to time, and every time I saw him I became nothing again. Even after I realized that he had intended none of this, that his cruelty was compounded of fear and shame, not disapproval and antagonism, his presence negated me. Damaged, he damaged me.
These words will ring true for anyone who’s ever experienced the end of a relationship or close friendship, whether or not the reader can relate to the situation described in the story.
The second novella enclosed in this title, “Good Will,” centers on a father’s anguish over whether his choice to adhere to a “back to the land” ethic has caused his son to act out in disturbing and abusive ways toward a little girl in his class. Like life, the story offers no concrete answers. However, my eye was drawn toward the fact that the father routinely slaughters animals, both in the wild and on his farm. There is an affecting scene in which the child cries that he does not wish to assist in slaughtering a flock of lambs, but his father harshly overrides his protestations and forces him to participate anyway. We have seen that violence begets violence, and perhaps the boy’s cruel treatment of a vulnerable classmate is his reaction to the cruelty he witnesses at home. It came as no surprise to me that the culmination of the boy’s terrible behavior was closely linked to the death of a beloved pet.
There’s no doubt the writer beautifully crafts the intricacies of human emotion, such as in this passage from “Ordinary Love”:
A year went by, and I fell out of love with him, and another year went by, and another, and finally he moved away. In those three years I saw him from time to time, and every time I saw him I became nothing again. Even after I realized that he had intended none of this, that his cruelty was compounded of fear and shame, not disapproval and antagonism, his presence negated me. Damaged, he damaged me.
These words will ring true for anyone who’s ever experienced the end of a relationship or close friendship, whether or not the reader can relate to the situation described in the story.
The second novella enclosed in this title, “Good Will,” centers on a father’s anguish over whether his choice to adhere to a “back to the land” ethic has caused his son to act out in disturbing and abusive ways toward a little girl in his class. Like life, the story offers no concrete answers. However, my eye was drawn toward the fact that the father routinely slaughters animals, both in the wild and on his farm. There is an affecting scene in which the child cries that he does not wish to assist in slaughtering a flock of lambs, but his father harshly overrides his protestations and forces him to participate anyway. We have seen that violence begets violence, and perhaps the boy’s cruel treatment of a vulnerable classmate is his reaction to the cruelty he witnesses at home. It came as no surprise to me that the culmination of the boy’s terrible behavior was closely linked to the death of a beloved pet.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 11, 2013
Actually, a 3.5 rating. I had a little trouble maintaining interest in "Ordinary Love" at first, as it seemed to be a typical family saga. But it grew on me, and by the end, I think there's fodder for thought.
"Good Will" was more interesting from the start. A couple has chosen a life removed from civilization, where they grow their own food and make everything they need: house, furniture, clothing. They have a young son who they are raising in their removed lifestyle. The consequences of course are mixed, good and bad. As the events unfold, not only do you begin to wonder, but so do the main characters. The dynamics between husband, wife and son evolve....
Both tales are told in the first person. With "Ordinary Love" the point of view of narrator can verge on the annoying scale; with "Good Will," I had other questions about the self-narration.
I'm reading this for a book club discussion and am looking forward to it. I think this is one of those books that the discussion may greatly add to the experience.
"Good Will" was more interesting from the start. A couple has chosen a life removed from civilization, where they grow their own food and make everything they need: house, furniture, clothing. They have a young son who they are raising in their removed lifestyle. The consequences of course are mixed, good and bad. As the events unfold, not only do you begin to wonder, but so do the main characters. The dynamics between husband, wife and son evolve....
Both tales are told in the first person. With "Ordinary Love" the point of view of narrator can verge on the annoying scale; with "Good Will," I had other questions about the self-narration.
I'm reading this for a book club discussion and am looking forward to it. I think this is one of those books that the discussion may greatly add to the experience.
August 9, 2016
These two novellas work perfectly together; Ordinary Love is narrated by a divorced mom of five grown children, while Good Will gives a dad's perspective. Although the families have quite different backgrounds, both marriages share slightly similar dynamics (husbands' domineering personalities), and both stories have powerful reveals.
In the first story, I love how the mom's name, Rachel, isn't introduced until the penultimate page - after she's finally come clean to her children with specifics about how their idyllic early family life ended. Also I always love reading about twins, especially older ones and their transition to independence.
The second story is set on a working farm, built with bare hands and operated by sheer ingenuity and constant toil. The smugly self-sufficient holier-than-God Bob is fascinating, and Smiley's suspenseful run-up is delicious and the ending is dramatically rewarding.
In the first story, I love how the mom's name, Rachel, isn't introduced until the penultimate page - after she's finally come clean to her children with specifics about how their idyllic early family life ended. Also I always love reading about twins, especially older ones and their transition to independence.
The second story is set on a working farm, built with bare hands and operated by sheer ingenuity and constant toil. The smugly self-sufficient holier-than-God Bob is fascinating, and Smiley's suspenseful run-up is delicious and the ending is dramatically rewarding.
November 11, 2019
I feel bad about this book by Jane Smiley. Hardly any readers/reviews. The book comprises 2 novellas, written Smiley style. And having read hardly any of her books, what I mean by style is mainly theme. A person who loves a farm.
The first book is about a mother who gets her children back after her husband takes them away, when she confesses about an affair she had/has. The children, now much older (some married, some not) talk about the various things that happened to them when they lived with their father. The book is sad and yet, there's hope and grit and survival. 3 stars for this one.
'Good will' is the second novella. It talks about a man Rob, along with wife Liz and child Tom who live on a farm. They live without the concept of money (150 dollars a year), mainly by growing what they need and bartering- products or services. The book is very affecting, about the many damages caused by this isolation. It's beautiful and a full 4 star!
The first book is about a mother who gets her children back after her husband takes them away, when she confesses about an affair she had/has. The children, now much older (some married, some not) talk about the various things that happened to them when they lived with their father. The book is sad and yet, there's hope and grit and survival. 3 stars for this one.
'Good will' is the second novella. It talks about a man Rob, along with wife Liz and child Tom who live on a farm. They live without the concept of money (150 dollars a year), mainly by growing what they need and bartering- products or services. The book is very affecting, about the many damages caused by this isolation. It's beautiful and a full 4 star!
August 27, 2012
First thing by Jane Smiley I ever read, at the suggestion of the Quality Paperback Book Club back in 1993. I had just finished a grueling first year in grad school and needed something not too taxing to transport me away from mathematical economics. I can still recall lying on the beach in Evanston on a Sunday afternoon becoming increasingly mesmerized by Smiley's characters in "Ordinary Love" -- the natural tone of their conversations made me feel as though I were eavesdropping. I revisited the book a few years later and probably will again. It's still my favorite of Smiley's. Though I've enjoyed several of her later books, these two novellas caught me pleasantly off-guard and occupy a warm spot in my memory.
January 18, 2017
About fifty pages into the first novella, I realized I was halfway finished. She was spending so much time detailing these characters and setting up their current situation and they were going to have no where to go. If this was the beginning of a novel, I would have thought it had promise, but it just ends. I was left wondering if maybe if this had been planned as a novel originally, and she just didn't want to "waste" what she'd already thought up. The second novella takes place on a farm, Jane Smiley's milieu...and I had to abandon it when a child is made to help slaughter lambs. Nope, nope, nope. Farm stories are great if they are about wheat or corn or something. But no dead animals, please.
February 25, 2014
This is probably closer to a 3.5 star. Smiley's clear prose puts a window upon two entirely different kinds of families in these two novellas. They ARE dated, definitely prior to the tech age- in every aspect. And also culturally quite a different mode of parental "eyes", IMHO. Novella length is a favorite of mine. This is a minority view, but I find inspection like these to a small group of characters far more satisfying, at times, then short stories or long winded philosophically laden plots of complexity. Both novellas hold the Jane Smiley quirkiness, rather a rah-rah to those demonstrated aspects of her category of humans "most flawed". These are easily read in one sitting each.
January 9, 2020
3.85****
An artfully written novella initially about identical twins reunited after living in different countries overlayed by the overstory of the whole family (same one) that had been previously torn asunder by the parents behavior. Told from the viewpoint of the mother, who obviously adores each of her five children and carries tremendous guilt for escaping their father and originally losing them through that effort. You are compelled to celebrate the outcome of all this loss that seems to be a real renewed/ enhanced appreciation for each other.
An artfully written novella initially about identical twins reunited after living in different countries overlayed by the overstory of the whole family (same one) that had been previously torn asunder by the parents behavior. Told from the viewpoint of the mother, who obviously adores each of her five children and carries tremendous guilt for escaping their father and originally losing them through that effort. You are compelled to celebrate the outcome of all this loss that seems to be a real renewed/ enhanced appreciation for each other.
February 26, 2011
Favorite quote: "I have another image of the mind, any mind, no special mind. It is a wheel, like a paddlewheel, turning slowly, with a kind of ordered vastness, bigger than it seems to be, going deeper, and bringing up more unrecognizable wealth than anyone thought possible. Brilliance is like little round red reflectors nailed to the crosspieces, eye-catching, lovely, in certain lights dazzling, but little even so, pure decoration."
November 9, 2011
Ordinary Love = 4 stars
Good Will = 5 stars
So I could have rounded up the overall rating to five stars, but I didn't. "Good Will" is one of the best novellas I've read this year (and I've read at least a dozen!).
Good Will = 5 stars
So I could have rounded up the overall rating to five stars, but I didn't. "Good Will" is one of the best novellas I've read this year (and I've read at least a dozen!).
October 30, 2011
I read this about ten years ago after reading Smiley's "Thousand Acres". I remember that the first Novella, "Ordinary Love" was achingly beautiful writing.
August 7, 2020
Deirdre Barber lent me this, and maybe it was partly the right timing, but I’m surprised I don’t hear about it more often. Two perfect little vignettes—well, much more than that at the same time.
January 31, 2019
This was one of many novellas I read when I was studying the genre and working on my own novella. I already had some favorites: Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, William Maxwelll's So Long, See You Tomorrow, and Charles Baxter's Believer. Jan Smiley’s two novellas feel perfect in terms of structure and exploration of extreme behavior, but they lack motivation to me. Regarding Ordinary Love, what woman would marry a man who was capable of taking her children away from her for a year, and what man would do such a thing? Re the affair that precipitated the separation, I get no sense of what attracted her to him (or to her husband either) until near the end, when I think she felt trapped in the marriage. Good Will was better and equally spooky: a couple that lives off the grid and off the money system, raising their son with total control. The wife takes up with a church called Bright Light and the husband objects. (The jealousy of God is rendered much better in Believer). There’s a very good rendition of salvation, which the wife feels as present joy and freedom. Meanwhile the child first calls a classmate “the n word,” after harming her doll, then cuts up her new coat, and finally sets the classmate’s house on fire. I especially liked the last section, where the family lives in town, getting counseling under court order, in danger of losing custody of their child.
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