ORDINARY LOVE & GOOD WILL by...

ORDINARY LOVE & GOOD WILL by Jane Smiley (Ivy: $4.95). These two exceptional novellas illuminate the joys and sorrows of contemporary American family life. In “Ordinary Love,” a comfortably middle-class mother and her twin sons struggle to re-establish the affection they shared before one son left for two years of teaching in India. Like Eve, the mother reflects on the seemingly perfect life her family once enjoyed, and how her infidelity shattered that idyll. But she has grown and drawn strength from her struggle to forge a single identity: The perfection of Eden can easily breed complacency. Robert Miller, the father/narrator of “Good Will,” sins through hubris, rather than lust. Defying the materialism of 20th-Century America, he lives without money on a model organic farm in rural Pennsylvania, crafting each implement with his own hands. But he attempts to control the lives of his wife and son as thoroughly as he controls his tools and orchards, and his labors are cruelly betrayed. Smiley’s understated prose never calls attention to itself, allowing the reader to savor discovering its beauty.