With Commonwealth, I came to the right place. This book is a bit of a departure for me, but I’ve been craving something different, something more profound and literary in nature.

It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together.Ĭommonwealth by Ann Patchett is a 2016 Harper publication. Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. 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. 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. 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. Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how this chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. 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. Heady with the idea that this famous intellectual is interested in what she is saying she confides in him the story of the event that marked her childhood and he turns it into a bestselling book called Commonwealth, which then becomes a movie.One Sunday afternoon in Southern California, Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited.

She becomes infatuated with an older writer, a Saul Bellow figure. Beverly’s baby Franny is grown up and estranged from her step-siblings. The story then jumps forward in time again. They grow up free to play with guns, Benadryl tablets they call Tic Tac sweets and more gin, until one fateful day there is a tragic accident with consequences that will reverberate throughout all their lives. Preoccupied with their own relationship, Bert and Beverly leave the children to their own devices. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.

Commonwealth patchett review