I just finished my February book club reading – Ann Patchett’s – Commonwealth. It is again a book I would not have read if it was not for the fact that I have joined the local library club and followed the recommendation to read it. If I wanted to be critical of the book I would sum it up – This is a book telling us that divorcing is a bad thing, has the destroying impact on families, but let’s face it – such is life! Of course, the book has its enthusiasts who think it is wonderful and beautifully and cleverly written. While I warmed up to the book towards the end of it and I agree that it is cleverly written, I definitely do not think that it is beautifully written. The language, in my opinion, is basic. Maybe it is OK, maybe it needs to be that way telling this particular story, but for me, there is nothing beautiful about the book’s language. Sometimes I think that I am a literary snob, expecting fireworks of admiration for authors of books I read. Perfectionism has always been for me the area needing some inner work. The books I particularly enjoy are the books I can identify with and in which I can find some explanations of my own life dilemmas. This particular book did not strike such a cord with me. The issues that drive the action of Commonwealth do not apply to my own life, so the book could not have the effect on me that other books have. Maybe I can associate with the issue of selfishness. The story highlights the self-centered approach of a couple of parents who want to live their bliss when the earlier marriages lost their lustre. The easy way to solve some of the marriage problems is to marry somebody else and then somebody else again. This I can identify with, and my life experience shows similar approach. If I were deciding now who to marry, I would go about it in a different way than I did in the past. If I really wanted to live with one person till death do us part, that is. I had my share of selfishness both as a giver and the receiver. Hmm… Such is life.
I can also identify with the loneliness of children portrayed in the book. Their parents were too busy with own personal comforts and preoccupation with each other to pay attention to the children who left alone got into activities negatively influencing their future lives. In my case, the parents were not that egoistic, but they were also too busy working. They did not have time to pay attention to me. So, I read, studied harder than necessary and in desperation to get my mother attention I often got sick. This worked well, and I grew up believing that I was a weakling. I was not.
Now, that I took the time to think and write about my impressions of the book, I am able to find more points that can associate with. One of them is the beauty of my mother and its impact on my life. Commonwealth is also about a beautiful and somehow selfish woman who is not a major character in the book. She is self-indulgent and egoistic. Her self-centered ways profoundly and negatively influence lives of ten people. As I just found out the author’s mother is a very beautiful woman. So beautiful that her daughter gave up on considering herself pretty and decided to focus on being clever, successful and a good person. This worked very well for her. Come to think about it, I was in the similar situation and focused on being clever, successful and a good person. Maybe it worked for me as well even if I am not internationally famous. Would my life have been better if I knew I was very attractive and used it to organise my life around it? Not sure, but it would have been a different life. Would I have been a better person? Probably not. It is interesting that even if Ann Patchett in the interview talks about her mother as being the loving person, one gets an opposite impression reading the book (which is supposed to be heavily autobiographical). The last pages portraying the mother as a warm and loving person do not seem convincing to me, they look like an attempt to change the readers’ impression caused by the full story. I can perhaps understand the duality of feelings of a daughter who sees her mother as a female competitor and at the same time wants to preserve in her memory the image of a loving and giving mother.
Ann Pritchard in the interview said about a book she considers a good one, but she did not enjoy reading it. She summed it up: It was not my thing.
My final comment on the book is – I have read it, and it is fine, but it is not my thing
