Commonwealth audiobook

Wow....I have spent hours thinking about this book. The characters are deep in my mind. There will be NO SPOILERS in my review!!! NONE!!!!If you need a 'little' information to know weather you want to risk reading an Ann Patchett book, which I clearly do not understand.....lol,the blurb gives enough details about this story. I'm only going to spit out random thoughts.... ( a discussion group would be enriching....one I'd love to be part of) I wasn't 100% crazy about every scene - every minute of this novel....yet overall I have to give this book a high top rating of 5 stars.These characters won't fade away easily. Believe me... You'll know all of them pretty darn well by the time you finish this book - and you won't need to take a single note. You'll just easily remember names and details ... ( HUGE CREDIT to ANN PATCHETT) I 'definitely' have 2 - ok- 3 ....shit....4 favorite scenes....But I think EVERYONE would be 'crazy-in-their-head'.....not to think the opening chapter is one of the most brilliant - stand out - memorable scenes to come along in a contemporary family-saga novel in YEARS!!!!! Readers will 'want' to talk about the opening scene. It's just normal!!! 1964 becomes very visual inside the Keating's house. My next favorite scene -- equally as brilliant as the first chapter ...( just different)....was a turn-on. ( alluring with tension to down-right hot). I'm not proud! Go, Ann Patchett! I never knew a waitress taking off her shoes could be so enticing. My next favorite scene scared the shit out of me - and then .... I said... "Whew".... Ok, we survived"?/!/?......Kids...breakfast ...candy bars... a walk to the lake?.....A personal share about my life: I have 4 first cousins. Add my older sister and I. The six of us spent our summer's together growing up. Some of us are married with children - some of us have been divorce - and re-married-- with blended families... There have been affairs - births - deaths All have traveled - some live in Israel -others now in the Midwest ..some still here in California. -- BUT our growing years were in Oakland/Berkeley and Piedmont. We are Rabbi's, lawyers, teachers, Doctors, Bart employees, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and some of us retired. It was easy to relate to this story for me - especially when the kids were smaller - exploring off on their own without parental supervision. That's how it was when I was growing up too. No adults knew of the trouble we got into. We just showed up in time for dinner.A FUNNY SCENE: feeding the children like they were the Von Trapp family. I was dying laughing!! ( you must read the scene yourself) Enough of this non-review-review! I liked this book!!! I wanted to change a couple of scenes - ( but that's part of what makes this book good, too) Point is... I was involved! I was fully invested and committed --living along side this family. Thank You to Harper Press and Ann Patchett

When Bert Cousins saw Beverly Keating it was love at first sight. Never mind that they met at the christening party for her second child. Never mind that Bert had a wife and several progeny of his own. He wanted this incredibly beautiful woman. This was the start of his life. It was also the end of two marriages, beginning a ripple that would continue spreading its impact over the next half century. Jump all those fifty years, more or less. Beverly’s ex, Fix Keating, the one she had left for Bert, is battling cancer. His daughter, Franny, the baby being christened in chapter one, is there to help out. Jump back to Bert and Beverly moving to Virginia in the 1960s, her two kids in tow and his four arriving for the summer. Jump to Franny working at a Chicago bar after dropping out of law school, and meeting a literary icon. The large jumps mean that we get only small fragments of entire lifetimes. It may be the writer’s impulse, as it is for many visual artists, to pare a story down to essentials, significant moments that define the substance of the tale being told. This happened then, and the rest followed from that. The notion being, I expect, that you don’t really need all that in-between material to see the path. If we see cause (pebble in the pond) we don’t need to see every single ripple, or the spaces between them, to understand that the ripples we do see arrived as a result of the initial stone.Ann Patchett - from The GuardianCommonwealth, another strong addition to Ann Patchett’s body of work, should be sold with springs in the binding for the considerable chronological leaps Patchett takes in giving us a portrait of people and families that emerge from the marital mixer. Given how many folks these days lived, live, or will live in blended families, Patchett among them us, there should be plenty of resonance for large portions of the reading public. The Keating kids move with their mother from California to Virginia when Beverly remarries. This echoes the author’s history, as she had made a similar move as a kid when her mother remarried, leaving LA for Tennessee. Her stepfather’s four kids stayed in California, as Bert’s kids do in the novel. The commonwealth of kids in both Patchett’s actual life and in her novel comes in at a half dozen, so she knows of what she writes. Her father, like Fix Keating had career in the LAPD. Patchett made good use of her work as a waitress to inform her description of Franny working at a bar in Chicago. There is plenty more of Ann Pachett’s life sewn into her story.There are two major events in the book from which much of the repercussion spreads. Beverly leaving her husband to marry someone else and move a continent away, and a tragic death that take place when the six kids are all together in the east. In The Getaway Car, a memoir-ish piece she wrote about writing (included in her non-fic collection This is the Story of a Happy Marriage), Patchett notes ...I’ve always been grateful (and somewhat amazed) that I read The Magic Mountain in my high school English class. That novel’s basic plot—a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society in confinement—became the story line for just about everything I’ve ever written. That would certainly fit here as the six step-sibs form their own community of sorts, one in which they may not have absolute power, but one in which they exercise as much group autonomy as possible. The circumstance in which they find themselves and the relationships that are formed there will affect the rest of their lives. Maybe the point is that we are all in it together, for better or worse, for ups and downs, for dislocation and for stasis, for jumps and for landings. Maybe it is just Patchett telling the story of her family. You could take it either way, or both ways. Neither interpretation would require a leap. There is a lot here on parenting. Much of it reflecting the attitudes of different eras. It is not so strange, for example, that a 1960s lawyer would leave most of the parenting to his homemaker wife, or wives, as the case may be. That reflected the pre-Lib ethos that ruled at the time. But Bert is definitely presented as an absentee parent. His ex, coping as a single mother with four kids, is stretched to the limit, The speed at which their mother ran from work to school to the grocery store to home had doubled. She was always arriving, always leaving, never there. but there is definitely a question as to how attentive a mother she would have been under any circumstances. Patchett plays the cheaper-by-the-half-dozen set up for a bit of light humor. Their mother made everyone line up in the kitchen according to age and come to the stove with their plate instead of putting the food on the table in dishes as she did every other night of the year. In the summers they wandered out of the civilized world and into the early orphanage scenes of Oliver Twist. And there is one particular bit involving the youngest of the crew, six-year-old Albie, and some inappropriate music, that is howlingly funny. But there are events in the half-dozen’s time together that are as serious as a heart attack. And those secrets threaten to come to light when Franny’s literary fling absorbs the family tale from her and reproduces it as an original novel, titled Commonwealth. And then, worse, a movie.The big time shifts in Commonwealth were both jarring and refreshing. Definitely makes the reader heat up those gray cells and get them sparking. I did wish, however that there had been more material about several of the characters. And some more indication of why they were the way they were. Why, for example, was Bev so open to moving on from her first marriage? The structure holds with only a few supporting pillars, but I wanted more rebar, closer together. I was reminded of Jennifer Haigh’s novel, Baker Towers, which was pretty good. But the author later wrote News From Heaven, a story collection that fleshed out the Baker Towers stories some more. I have no idea if Patchett has more material in store for these characters, but it would not be a bad idea if she did. Patchett’s writing here is closer to home than in some of her well-known novels. Her birthplace, Los Angeles, instead of Bel Canto’s unspecified Somewhere, South America, Virginia (standing in for Tennessee when she grew up and where she still lives) instead of the remote Amazon of State of Wonder. The characters and situations, clearly drawn from Patchett’s life, resonate with a palpable reality, even though no one of them holds the stage long enough. Connections are made between events and their consequences, supported by a swath of vignette and sharp observation. You are unlikely to relate to all the commonwealth members or their outer circle, but there are bound to be some characters who trip your connection switches, and others whose circumstances, and maybe ways of being you will recognize. A society of people will not rise, fall, or sustain, as a result of reading Commonwealth, but it would definitely be in their collective self-interest to do so. It is a fascinating look at how change can affect our lives, and how we might find some sustenance by facing the world with the help and support of those with whom we have been thrown together.Publication - 9/13/2016Review Posted and first posted - 6/10/2016=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pagesPatchett seems to have stopped adding tweets to her Twitter page in 2011, but the feed from the bookstore in which she is a partner, Parnassus Books, is alive and wellThe only other Ann Patchett book I have reviewed is State of Wonder. I have read but not reviewed Bel Canto and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage.A musical item of possible relevance November 23, 2016 - Commonwealth is named to the NY Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2016

I loved this book. Gorgeously written, as is always the case with Ann Patchett. There is an ambitious narrative structure that, at times, gets away from the writer, but still, this is so so good.

Life is messy a lot of the time and no matter how much people love their families, I think we have to admit that we've all experienced some of the messiness that happens in life. The book opens with a christening party with lots of alcohol and you can't help but think by the end - how that first bottle of gin changed so many lives . While these are very different stories by Ann Patchett, the party scene with the house full of people reminded me just a little of the house full of people in Bel Canto - a lot of people and a lot going on, multiple stories and multiple conversations. That's where the similarities ended but the feel of that was familiar. Fast forward ,decades later and we learn just how much of what happens at this party has affected lives - two couples have divorced and the 6 children they have between them have forged unexpected bonds over their childhood and as adults. The narrative moves around in time and and we in essence don't have the full story of what happens over the years, but snap shots of this blended family. While it seems that there is not much of a plot, the story is full of life . You may not like every one of these characters but yet they seemed real, real enough that you understand why some of them are not happy with how their story is portrayed in the novel written about them by another character ! Recommended to fans of Patchett and anyone else who enjoys family dramas.Thanks to Harper Collins and Edelweiss.

So, this is what happens when one too many gin and orange juices flow. At a baptism. Not the typical kind. The fun kind. One with lots of friends and family and somehow booze gets into the mix and what started off as a ritual turned into a party then spice in some infidelity and the wheels are put into motion for a family life detour.This is a story about families- their dysfunction, destruction, and loyalty. Truths are exposed after the publication of a novel that is loosely based on the 2 families. It's the realIzation of truths when secrets are revealed. Patchett expertly packages a novel within a novel - literally- with an abundance of themes-Divorce, addiction, relationships, personal growth, loss and regret.Not linear but not confusing; nice prose, interesting characters and entertaining. My 2nd Patchett. 4*

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett is a 2016 Harper publication. This book is a bit of a departure for me, but I’ve been craving something different, something more profound and literary in nature. With Commonwealth, I came to the right place. One fateful Sunday afternoon, Bert Cousins arrives uninvited to Franny Keating’s christening party. He had only shown up to escape his own family life, which included his pregnant wife and three children. But, once he set eyes on the beautiful Beverly Keating, mother of Franny, he knew their fates were sealed. From that day forward life was never the same for the Keating’s or the Cousin’s. Bert and Beverly left their prospective spouses, got married, and like a premonition or example of the future family model, became a blended family.After reading a few reviews for this book, I have to confess, I feel slightly out of my element. Other than an occasional hankering to read a classic novel or perhaps something from Joyce Carol Oates, I rarely choose pure literature, although I love it when that prose shows up in the other genres I enjoy.Covering a vast span of time, the author touches base with all those affected by the disruption of their stable lives, the fallout of Beverly and Bert’s decision to leave their spouses, how their children learned to cope, the bonds they forged, the tragedies they endured, and the various directions their lives took over time, examining their triumphs and failures, loves and losses. The story is told through various stages of the character’s lives, in no particular order, which is a little unusual, and does require your full attention. But, the prose, of course, is so utterly absorbing, I did not want the book to end. I was totally immersed in the lives of these well drawn characters, some of whom were loveable, others not so much, while some are flaky and unsettled, and while some managed quite well in life, others flailed and faltered. It is certainly an interesting character study, giving the reader an inside peek into the lives of all those profoundly affected by the summers they spent in Commonwealth, Virginia. Family is family, blended or not, and this story proves that, with characters who may seem a little familiar to us. I especially loved the pieces of the story each person held secretly within their hearts, and the way they helped each other, even when they could have just as easily turned a cold shoulder. Overall, this is an absorbing and fascinating portrait of family and of life, which any fan of literary fiction will not want to miss.

Sometimes I do dumb things, and sometimes it works out for me.More accurately: I spend 99% of my time being an idiot on this website, and I keep getting rewarded for it. For example.In early 2020, I read The Dutch House after being full-on fixated with the cover for almost a year, and I liked it. I didn't five stars level love it, but I gave it 4.5 and wrote a big review and blah blah blah.So the normal thing to do in this scenario would be keep the author, Ann Patchett, on my radar, and move on.Instead, for reasons inexplicable even to me, I went out and bought every reasonably priced Patchett book I could find, immediately. This is Greek-level pride and deserves a corresponding level of tragedy. For my hubris, I should be struck down immediately by a lightning bolt straight from Mount Vesuvius.Instead, I read a book with the ugliest cover I have ever seen in my life, and an equally lame title, and boom. Four point five, AGAIN.Then I read this book, and here we are. A trio of four-plus star reads. I'm going to live forever.This is a literary fiction about a family, which, excluding a literary fiction about unlikable women, is my favorite thing for a book to me. This is very beautifully written, and I love my new family, and in spite of the fact that there isn't really a plot here, I couldn't put it down.Along with The Immortalists, this is one of two lit fics about a bunch of siblings I gave 4 stars to in one week. What a peak of my life.I didn't love the individual characters in this very profoundly (which is rare for me), so this is not a perfect read, but damn it's close. Ann Patchett quest continues.Bottom line: Stay dumb, folks. It works.----------------pre-reviewi have never read a good book about a family and not come out of it missing my new siblings terribly.review to come / 4 stars----------------currently-reading updatesmight mess around and end the year with a reading slumpclear ur sh*t book 63no quest, just seeing how many more i can finish----------------tbr reviewlove to spend half a year amassing copies of every book an author has published without reading any of them

"Had the Keatings just put the gin in their liquor cabinet no one would have thought less of them. But Fix Keating had given the bottle to his wife, and his wife, worn down by the stress of throwing a good party, was going to have a drink, and if she was going to have a drink then by God everyone at the party was welcome to join her." A couple receives a very unusual gift at a christening party. I don’t remember anyone ever showing up with a bottle of gin at either of my children’s baptisms, but then again we didn’t invite every soul we knew and then some! In Commonwealth, an uninvited guest will provide the gin, the hostess will squeeze the oranges, and the neighbors will dash to their homes to add to the stash of alcohol. Well, if you’ve ever been to a party with lots of booze, which I suspect you have, then I’m sure you know that something is bound to happen. What happens at the christening party of pretty little Franny Keating will have a lasting effect on two families. I thought this was an entertaining book. The characters are very well developed and seemed so real. Six children and two sets of parents, a good deal of dysfunction, and some very interesting family dynamics make for a lot of drama. Shifting between characters and timelines kept the narrative engaging. I don’t think I would have liked this as much if it had been told in a linear fashion. The story jumped back and forth from when the children were very young, to teen years, to younger adults, and into middle-age. Adults grew into old age. It didn’t trip me up at all, as Patchett managed to pull this off with ease. I worried for these kids, out and about with no or little supervision – would they actually make it into adulthood?! My sister and I were watched like hawks by our parents, so I couldn’t at all relate to this story – perhaps that piqued my interest even more. As is the case with siblings and groups of kids, not everyone got along. Someone is always picked on or exploited for the benefit of the others. That was true here as well. I felt sorry for little Albie! There’s always that little kid that you see in action in real life and you think to yourself, “I wonder how he/she’s going to turn out?” Well, that’s what I thought about Albie. And I found out! I would actually have liked to learn a bit more about Albie in his older years, but there is no way Patchett could cover everyone in detail through adulthood unless she wanted to turn this into a family saga of sorts. There were a couple of things I fussed about while reading this, so I’ll share here. I thought the ending was rushed. I just expected it to perhaps come together a bit more by the end, but it seemed to finish rather abruptly. Also, there was a mystery event that is revealed to the reader in little bits and pieces. I felt the suspense of this building up as I turned the pages. I was eager to return to this part of the story so I could find out what happened. When I did, however, I felt a bit underwhelmed. I don’t know why I thought this was leading us somewhere else. I felt sad rather than shocked. I guess I expected to feel more surprised. I really like Ann Patchett’s concise prose, her storytelling feels fluid even with shifts in time. I liked the reflection on the “what-ifs”. If this one thing had happened differently, then things would have turned out another way. The choices we make lead us down paths that we cannot know ahead of time, but we should know that all of our choices will affect more than just ourselves. This book would appeal to readers that like contemporary fiction and stories about interesting family dynamics. This is my second novel by this author, and I plan to read more! I’m giving Commonwealth 3.5 stars rounded up for the strength in the writing.

4 stars to Ann Patchett's Commonwealth. I chose this book because it was about drama and relationships within a complex family, as it seemed similar the last book I had written, and it was written in a way that I hoped would align with my favorite styles: from multiple character view points but with a focus via a single character. It did not disappoint and I am glad I read the book, but I don't think it was in my top favorite's list. Story The book is told mostly from the character of Franny Keating, but several chapters cover each of her 5 siblings (some biological, some step). Her parents divorced after her christening in the 1960s, when her mother began an affair with Franny's father's colleague. When the two later married, his 4 children, Franny and her sister shared a home for most of their remaining childhood years alternating between Virginia and California, living with each set of parents and new step-families. Chapters focus on different friendships and relationships, spanning 50 years of Franny's life until the parents pass away. Readers get to watch how each sibling interprets and experiences death, marriage, parenting, careers and general comfort with life. It's a great commentary on the everyday happenings of a family touched by different realities in the course of life. Strengths 1. Characters are vivid. With 4 parents, 6 children, countless spouses/partners and grandchildren, it's a lot to keep up with. The author does a great job at showing who is important and who isn't, which makes keeping track of everyone very easy. It's a very character-driven story with lots of plot elements along for the ride. 2. Writing is good. There are a few lengthy areas with great descriptions when they are needed, and dialogue is on point. You feel like you are there with the characters. Suggestions 1. Dates were a little important in this book, but they were mostly left out. Typically, when you cover 50 years of the life of 15 major characters, each chapter would have a date and location so you can follow along easily. The author chose not to include dates and jumped around throughout the 50 year period. At times, it took a few minutes to determine what was happening and in which time period. I liked this a lot, as it was different than most books like this one, but it was a little frustrating at times as I felt like I only had a piece of the puzzle and wasn't even sure what I needed to know. It wasn't bad, just different -- and it may have been a little stronger with a little more structure in the how the book progressed. Final Thoughts It's a definite read for anyone who likes family dramas, books spanning lengthy time periods, watching what happens to characters over important periods in their life, but it's just 10 to 12 vignettes that are beautiful but don't tell the whole story. Then again, in life, we don't know the full story of all our friends, so this is like reading about an old friend. And that's a good thing in my book. About Me For those new to me or my reviews... here's the scoop: I read A LOT. I write A LOT. And now I blog A LOT. First the book review goes on Goodreads, and then I send it on over to my WordPress blog at https://thisismytruthnow.com, where you'll also find TV & Film reviews, the revealing and introspective 365 Daily Challenge and lots of blogging about places I've visited all over the world. And you can find all my social media profiles to get the details on the who/what/when/where and my pictures. Leave a comment and let me know what you think. Vote in the poll and ratings. Thanks for stopping by.

Dysfunctional family drama * Dysfunctional formatting * Dysfunctional review COMMONWEALTH by ANN PATCHETT is a literary fiction novel to cherish for its many different interwoven and blended stories of love, destiny, loyalty, loss, secrets, disappointments, betrayal, and mistakes creating a family bonded together by a common understanding of each other.ANN PATCHETT delivers an interesting, complicated, and well-written read here but I did find it to be somewhat challenging at times to keep up with all the characters, the different timelines, and their points of view as each chapter would jump around from place and time so you had to really pay close attention.  It definitely made it an unusual and enjoyable read though.There were a few scenes in this novel that I found extremely enjoyable and others where I cringed but what I actually really liked for the most part was that we got a good sense into how time changes and affects the lives of these characters.  How their lives evolved with the help and support from the people in their lives.To sum it all up it was an entertaining, unusual, insightful, and a steady-paced read with a satisfying ending.  I found that the audiobook had an excellent narrator for another enjoyable listen!  Would recommend!!All of Brenda & my reviews can be found on our Sister Blog:http://www.twogirlslostinacouleereadi...

This was a beautiful book to finish off my reading year of 2016! It was my first novel by Ann Patchett, and throughout my reading of it I couldn't help but wonder how difficult the writing of this book must have been. That's because "Commonwealth" isn't written in chronological order. In fact, it starts in the middle of the story and proceeds to the ending of the story in chapter two. The rest of the book goes back and forth between the present, past and future, and you would think that that would make the book uninteresting and utterly spoiled. However, Ann Patchett is a talented story-teller because that is not the case! This novel just goes to show that even though you know how things end, that doesn't make the reading experience less of a pleasure. I loved "Commonwealth" for this feat and I admired the surprising structure as well as the beautiful storyline. This is a novel about family, destinies and life in general. It's one of those novels that questions the roads we take and how things could easily have ended up differently. It follows various families and characters, and it is thoroughly special and captivating throughout. I loved this book so much, and I'm definitely going to dive more into Ann Patchett's authorship in the new, upcoming year.