Commonwealth

I have read all of Ann Patchett's books.  They are all terrific.  As I started reading this book, Commonwealth, I was thinking, ehh not her best work,  but then you hit the first real twist and you are thrown for a loop.  Patchett has done it again.  She is great at getting inside her characters and really making you understand their feelings and their perspective on the situations they are living through.

This is a story about six children and how their families are intermingled.  This is a story about how life plays out like a chain reaction and each occurrence leads to the next.  It doesn't do any good to sit and wonder what if this happened or that didn't happen to avoid a part of your life you would rather skip, because then the good things might not have happened either.  When Bert Cousins ends up at the christening party for new baby Franny Keating, it starts the sequence of events in motion for the Cousins and Keatings families that lasts their entire lives.

When Bert Cousins kisses Beverly Keating, both their marriages are in jeopardy.  The six children, Caroline and Franny Keating and Cal, Holly, Jeanette and Albie Cousins all end up as step siblings and spend their summers together.  As they grow up and move on with their lives the experiences they had during those childhood summers influence their adulthood.  When Franny falls in love with Leo Posen an award winning author who is suffering a dry spell, she tells him her life story which he turns into a fictitious account that becomes a bestseller.  As each of the family members reads the book it brings them all back together and Franny must come to terms with the question of who owns their story.  The siblings are forced to come to terms with the secrets and shared history both good and bad.  This is a story of family love, loss and the strength of family loyalty.