Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I pretty sure the person who made up the saying “Misery loves company” must have read Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. Obviously, I have some serious issues with this novel. Firstly, this book has entirely TOO many people. For starters, there are 11 main characters including 6 kids and 4 parents (in the first chapter). We have a Priest who only makes an appearance at the very start of the book and then disappears along with a relative after one horny dance, then more spouses for the original characters, house help (explain why Ernestine was important?), a Zen retreat in Switzerland led by Michael (who is this guy?) that enters the story without reason, and on and on and on. This is the first time in ages that I had to draw up a lineage map and figure out who belonged to whom. I started to feel like the Bible in Matthew 1 with all the begats…you get my drift. I treated my self-made cheat sheet like the Holy Grail until I finished the book. Secondly, this validates what we have always known. Unhappy families make for unhappy families. Selfish people make for unhappy families. Cheating spouses make for unhappy families, drunken people make for unhappy families, and drugs make for unhappy families. Jeepers…there are a lot of unhappy people in this book. In a world of givers and takers…I would say that at almost any point in this novel, people were simply takers. It got boring. There was no one to root for. Of course, that is when I wasn’t researching my genealogy map. Honestly, I have a lot of problems with this book. Mostly, I just didn’t like it. The story just kept going in circles but that may because the author just kept retelling the same story repeatedly. She could jump decades and STILL be telling the same story. To me a well-crafted first chapter disintegrated into a cacophony of characters that ambled around Virginia, California, Switzerland, Chicago, Iowa, and a multitude of other places. Finally, this book was so full of horrid and boorish characters that it actually made me like The Nest. That should tell you something.