The book’s summary made it sound like there was going to be a lot more intrigue and many more characters. It talks about how one incident impacts generations of these two families but, really, it’s just the parents at their children. So from the get-go, this is not a “generational novel” (like Salt Houses which, yes, I am still going on about). It’s just a drama. It is set in Virginia but it starts in California so it’s completely okay if you’re confused on that at […]
This had so much potential…
I liked Commonwealth but I think I could have loved it. In the past the Cousins and Keatings are brought together one fateful day at a Christening party when Mr Cousins kisses Mrs Keating. After a few years of secret rendezvouses the Keatings and Cousins officially merge into one big, messy unit. This combined family situation begins to dissolve when one of the six children dies in an accident that is slowly revealed to the reader. “He realized then what he had known from the first minute […]
The Repercussions of Drugging Unwitting Children (And Other Things)
This book was one of those that I liked, but I also didn’t much like it, or at least I didn’t really like or understand the characters in it. Yes, that’s it exactly. I didn’t understand a single one of the many characters in this book. And that’s not entirely my fault. In Commonwealth, one of the children of a blended family falls in love with a much older writer and ends up telling him stories about her childhood. And he ends up writing […]
Sometimes I wonder if I read the same book as everyone else.
I’ve only read one of Ann Patchett’s books before this, and I enjoyed Bel Canto. I thought it was well-written and the kidnapping plot kept me invested until the very last page. Last year, my book club read State of Wonder and I just couldn’t get into it. That very same book club chose Commonwealth for their September book. I didn’t go to the meeting, but I put my name on the library list, and it took FOREVER for it to be my turn. The […]
The first half is wonderful, the second made me want to throw things.
I hate books like this. Ones that start out so promising, and then crap out halfway through. Like they get lost in the swirl of it all and then just flush themselves down the toilet in despair. At it’s most basic, The Patron Saint of Liars is about leaving. The blurb on the back cover of the novel is misleading. It makes it seem like Rose is the main character, when in fact, we lose touch with her halfway through, when she becomes a shadow […]
A Study in Ambiguous Endings and Disappointment
The Patron Saint of Liars is a book I’ve seen kicking around for years. I’ve always told myself that one day I’ll get around to reading it and finally the time came. I didn’t know what to expect going in, other than the blurb about it taking place at a home for unwed mothers in the 60s and 70s. The narrative structure rotates through three main points of view. Rose, the not-so-unwed mother who leaves her husband when she finds out she’s pregnant. Just takes […]
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