Ann Patchett - Commonwealth

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.
Told with equal measures of humor and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a meditation on inspiration, interpretation, and the ownership of stories. It is a brilliant and tender tale of the far-reaching ties of love and responsibility that bind us together. 

Comment: This is yet another book I've got interested in after reading the blurb which then created some expectations in what I'd be reading but the reality negatively surprised me and this didn't really go the path I hoped for in my head...

This is a fiction story mixing some historical elements and literary content, meaning that one can read it as an historical piece but I'd say the heaviest tone in the story is that of "intellectual" literature and perhaps I'm being unfair but this has certainly read as an introspective text and I can't think of it as just an entertaining story.

Basically we are told about the lives of two families, in how one day Bert Cousins kissed Beverly Reading at the party of the christening of Beverly's daughter Franny and later they split from their respective spouses to marry each other. Between them they have 6 children that now have to learn to live together while sharing experiences and a childhood divided into their parent's houses.

Did you read what I wrote? 

"... we are told..." which means most of this book is about what the reader is told instead of seeing things happen and I have to say I found it extremely frustrating and boring how the author told her story always jumping from the past to the present to all kinds in between and it was difficult to follow who was speaking, what was happening and to whom and this ruined the experience for me. 

I didn't like this story to be honest, but had the writing been more appealing for my taste, I might have endured it more easily. 

The idea of this book was very promising for me. I immediately thought this would be a story in the likes of Transformations by Daniele Steel in terms of content. Two families get together and among difficulties and compromise and maybe good moments, their experience together would shape their lives, perhaps for good in the case of some, and for bad in others.

However, this was not what we get for this story focused on the ways the children were affected but there's no bond visible that made me like them and sincerely, the things they go through were very boring for me to read.

I think there are a few details that were interesting. How grow-up Franny gets to know and be attracted to older man Leon Posen, how the children dealt with a tragedy in their midst, how they would act depending on whose parent's house they were in... but all these things were lost among the huge amount of things being told to the reader, and some were quite unnecessary because it didn't add anything to the plot nor to how we might appreciate the characters more.

I didn't connect with the characters so the supposed  "inspiration" and "tenderness" of this book just didn't grab me at all.

This is where I think the book got to intellectual, because things are written and we are supposed to infer or to interpret or to judge but the writing style was so boring I just wanted to turn the pages and end it already. I don't think I got to like any of the characters. Their lives and thoughts are given sporadically, sometimes I wonder why because everything is pretty much solved in the end. We just need to muse about things, not really be a part of the plot's development nor the character's evolution. Everyone was boring, everything was boring. 

I kept going because there is one situation depicted that originates a big part of the conflict and I assumed something major would happen but... no. We are left wondering on our own the meaning of everything and most of it is not interesting.

I'll certainly not read more by this author. Again, how out expectations can mislead us...I get really enthusiastic about some possibilities when I read certain blurbs but how annoying it is to see not everyone would think like me....oh well, onto another book...

Grade: 4/10