The Things We Do For Love

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, addiction, pregnancy loss and termination, death, child death, emotional abuse, and physical abuse.

Angie is one of the novel’s protagonists and point-of-view characters. Her conflict and character arc center on her longing to be a mother as she grapples with heartache stemming from the deaths of her father and infant daughter, a failed adoption, and a divorce. She keeps herself busy to avoid her grief: “She had always been a woman with laserlike focus. When she started something, there was no halfway, no easy beginning. It was this trait that had broken her” (35). As the final sentence notes, this tunnel-vision harms Angie by preventing her from Embracing Grief to Heal and by making her unaware of others’ needs. Nevertheless, despite recognizing that her obsessive behavior destroyed her marriage, Angie still launches herself headlong into saving the family restaurant. Mira highlights her tendency toward avoidance when she says, “You need to slow down […] How will you ever figure out what you want when everything is a blur?” (44). Angie speeds through life to elude pain and consequently loses sight of what she wants and needs.