Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. HarperCollins Publishers, 2016. 322 pp.
This is the story of two families and the changes and challenges that came about for those families when the parents unexpectedly divorced.
They all lived in California, but after the divorce one set of parents moved to Virginia, which meant that the six children went back and forth and spent a great deal of time together. They weren’t necessarily inclined to be best friends, but were joined by their mutual interest in putting things over on the parent they were visiting.
The story continues through the years as they grow up and move on. Franny, one of the children, has become involved with a writer and talks to him about those childhood days, which hold some secrets and he writes a book which causes a bit of a stir.
I’ve always enjoyed Patchett, but I found her writing in this book a little uneven and confusing. I did enjoy some parts very much, but some not so much. It was rather readable but not one of her best efforts.
– C.M.
A Reader’s Delight by Noel Perrin. University Press of New England, 1988. 203 pp.
I received this book as a gift, otherwise I might never have run across it. The author was an English professor at Dartmouth, a highly regarded author of a number of books and also articles and reviews. This volume is about some of his favorite books by other authors, ones that he considers “neglected minor masterpieces.” In this book he presents forty of them in very readable and sometimes humorous essays.
Most of these books I had never heard of, although I had read two; and one, Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens, is a favorite of mine. That essay was entitled “The Best American Novel of World War II.” Some of these essays made me really long to read the books he was reviewing, although some may not be available. I’ll mention two I would like very much to read. The first is Democracy by Henry Adams, written in l880. This novel is about a wealthy young widow who moves from New York to Washington in hopes of finding a man more than six inches tall, which how she describes the men in New York. But she is very disappointed to find that men are not taller in the Capital. The author entitles that essay “Gulliver Goes to Washington.”
The second one is The Walls Came Tumbling Down, by Henriette Roosenberg, written in l957. The author gave this essay the title “Night and Fog People.” Roosenberg was a young Dutch woman who was a courier in the resistance movement during World War II. She was caught and imprisoned by the Nazis and condemned to death. But somehow she survived, after a terrible time in the death camp, and was liberated in l945. Unfortunately this one may be out of print.” A Reader’s Delight truly is a delight. I couldn’t put it down. – P.M.