Commonwealth

Author: Ann Patchett
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017
Pages: 336
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: 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.

Review: This book has been on my list to read for what seems like forever, and I guess it really has been. This was published in 2017. Amazing how time flies.

I loved my prior read, Broken Country, so much that I knew any book that followed was going to be tough to get into. Even still, I don't know if there's any situation where Commonwealth would be a book I'd remember for all the right reasons. There were time leaps and a lot of characters. 

This is the same subgenre as The Nest and The Immortalists and I didn't enjoy either of those either, and in truth, Commonwealth was the most tolerable.