Commonwealth
May. 28th, 2025 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI've really enjoyed all the other Ann Patchett books I've read but, for some reason, Commonwealth didn't really work for me. It's still got really good writing, complex and layered charaters, and a masterfully woven together story that builds as the book progresses.
But I think it was a bit too fractured to come together into a satisfyingly cohesive whole.
It's about two families brought together by infidelity and remarriage, with the kids of both sets of parents thrown together and developing varied relationships between them.
It's also about a book within the book, with the same title as the book and about the characters in the book - which was pleasingly meta - and how that affects what they know or don't know and feel or don't feel about each other.
I did like Franny as a (sort-of) protagonist, and I grew to appreciate various of the other characters as well. But the way in which certain events were obscured and revealed only gradually felt a bit overly contrived, to the extent that, even when all the jigsaw pieces were assembled, the picture still felt blurry.
I was interested in some parts of the story more than others - and those were the ones that were unfortunately often skipped over or summarised more than I would have preferred.
It was also pretty depressing all the way through.
So, an ambitious book with a lot of good qualities, but the parts didn't add up to a particularly successful whole for me.
But I think it was a bit too fractured to come together into a satisfyingly cohesive whole.
It's about two families brought together by infidelity and remarriage, with the kids of both sets of parents thrown together and developing varied relationships between them.
It's also about a book within the book, with the same title as the book and about the characters in the book - which was pleasingly meta - and how that affects what they know or don't know and feel or don't feel about each other.
I did like Franny as a (sort-of) protagonist, and I grew to appreciate various of the other characters as well. But the way in which certain events were obscured and revealed only gradually felt a bit overly contrived, to the extent that, even when all the jigsaw pieces were assembled, the picture still felt blurry.
I was interested in some parts of the story more than others - and those were the ones that were unfortunately often skipped over or summarised more than I would have preferred.
It was also pretty depressing all the way through.
So, an ambitious book with a lot of good qualities, but the parts didn't add up to a particularly successful whole for me.
