Commonwealth (Harper Perennial Olive Editions)

by Ann Patchett

"One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited. Before evening falls, he has kissed Franny's mother, Beverly--thus setting in motion the dissolution of their marriages and the joining of two families. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them. When, in her twenties, Franny begins an affair with the legendary author Leon Posen and tells him about her family, the story of her siblings is no longer hers to control. Their childhood becomes the basis for his wildly successful book, ultimately forcing them to come to terms with their losses, their guilt, and the deeply loyal connection they feel for one another."--

• ISBN10: 0062491792
• ISBN13: 9780062491794
• Publish Date: 13 September 2016 (first published 8 September 2016)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[clementine]

I feel like the things that were interesting about this book were things that I didn't like, namely that everything juicy is implied. Most of what actually makes it to the page are banal scenes, and while I do admire Patchett's ability to create a story out of the mundane and to realize the full power of implication, I couldn't help but feel frustrated by this narrative technique. It felt very anticlimactic to me! The jumpiness - the non-linear narrative, the multiple character perspectives - prevented me from ever being fully absorbed into the story. There are a lot of characters to juggle here, and most only get the briefest time to shine. (But then in the first chapter we hear from a priest who goes on to marry the sister of one of the main characters and who is never heard from again, which is just like... why.) There never seemed to be a focal point - the summary implies that it's about a famous novelist repurposing the true story of one family's tragedy, but the relationship between Franny and the novelist isn't explored at all. We see only the beginning and end of the relationship, and while Patchett does a wonderful job of showing the dynamics between them in those few scenes, it feels disingenuous to say that the book is really "about" that. In fact, it didn't really seem to be "about" anything the dust jacket claims: the exploration of blended family dynamics felt flat, the theme of family tragedy was surface-level. I just never really believed that these were people who experienced deep trauma. The prose itself was pretty ordinary - nothing to marvel at technically. I can appreciate what novel is trying to do, and there were a lot of sparks of potential, but I simply never felt like the story or the characters were that interesting, and by the end I was very ready to move on to something else on my to-read pile.