Commonwealth is the story of a blended family.  Fix and Beverly Keating have two daughters, Caroline and Franny.  Bert and Teresa Cousins have four children, Cal, Holly, Jeanette and Albie.  Bert and Beverly divorce their spouses, marry, and all six children then spend summers together at their home in Virginia.  Patchett deftly describes each of these characters’ and their relationships to each other.  All four parents and their children have their own personalities which evolve while they are explored through five decades.

Commonwealth is a readable and entertaining novel which is sure to be another bestseller for the ubiquitous Ann Patchett.

Main character, Jacob Bloch, is a husband, son, grandson and father.  He has been searching throughout his adult life, but is never exactly sure what he is trying to find.  When his marriage is in trouble,  Israel suffers an earthquake which results in a catastrophic war, and Bloch is asked to come aid his “homeland,” he is forced to look more deeply into himself and his effect on those he loves.

Here I Am depicts a man, a marriage, the Mideast and American Judaism in crisis.  Much of the repartee is enormously clever, but the entire Bloch family is too smart and quick witted to be true, including Jacob’s three young sons.

Cora, a slave on a plantation in Georgia, escapes with another slave named Caesar.  With the help of the underground railroad, which, in this novel, is actually a railroad, Cora travels through several states, each with its own peculiar laws and treatments of blacks.   Always in pursuit of her is Ridgeway, a slave catcher who is zealously trying to capture Cora and take her back to Georgia.

Whitehead’s novel has gotten many accolades and is this month’s selection for Oprah’s Book Club.  Quite frankly, I don’t get it.  At times the prose is awkward and the blending of historical fiction with blatant inaccuracies, even if they are meant to be literary tools, didn’t work for me.  I much preferred James McBride’s Song Yet Sung, also about a runaway female slave and the underground railroad.

On February 4th, 1974, Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper mogul, William Randolph Hearst, was forcibly taken from her San Francisco apartment by members of The Symbionese Liberation Army, a group of eight young radicals.  Two months after her abduction, she had joined the “army,” taken on a new name, learned to expertly handle fire arms, and robbed a bank.  Was Hearst brain washed, did she suffer Stockholm Syndrome or was this an act she put on to save her life?  Toobin, in objective, straight forward prose, looks at all the angles and makes it pretty clear what he believes really happened to her.

If, like me, you are curious what the real story was or if you just want to read a true story that is often more unbelievable than a work of fiction, you will want to read American Heiress.

Finally, a book about immigrants that is not horribly depressing.  Jende Jonga leaves Cameroon for New York City.  Several years later he is able to send for his wife, Neni, and their young son.  A successful cousin helps him land a job as a chauffeur for the Edwards family while Neni works as a caregiver and attends school part-time, hoping someday to become a pharmacist.  Their life is better than they ever dreamed it could be until Mr. Edwards’ company, Lehman Brothers, is destroyed.

Behold the Dreamers is a fine debut novel with engaging characters.  It is a tale of strength, resourcefulness and optimism.

 

Dave Eggers never repeats himself; each of his books is unlike anything he has written before.  In his most recent work, he tells the story of  Josie, a woman who suddenly leaves for Alaska with her two children, Paul age 8 and Ana 5.  Traveling across the state in an old RV she has rented that does not exceed 48 miles an hour, Josie ponders her history and the people who she feels have been responsible for her flight from Ohio.

Heroes of the Frontier is both poignant and funny, and Josie is a wonderfully drawn character who grabs her readers, despite her flaws.  Seldom can a male writer get into the head of a female character and depict her in an honest, realistic way.  Dave Eggers is one of those male authors.

Ada Sibelius lives an unconventional childhood.  She is raised by a single father, is home schooled, and her only friends are her dad’s colleagues at a computer lab at a prestigious Boston university.  When she is twelve, as her father’s thinking becomes foggy and his memory fails, Ada, with the help of her father’s close friend, begins to live a more typical life.  And when her father must go into a nursing home, she is forced to see that her father, David Sibelius, is not who he claims to be.

The Unseen World is an enjoyable read, for the most part.  However, the ending left me flat.  It was predictable, silly and self-conscious.

Daniel Sullivan is retrieving his father’s ashes when he meets Claudette Wells, a world famous movie star who abandoned her high profile life to live anonymously with her young son.  Thus begins Daniel and Claudette’s lives together in an very isolated part of Ireland.  Told from different points of view, This Must Be the Place is Daniel’s story from his Catholic upbringing in Brooklyn to his college years in England to his first marriage in California to his life with Claudette.  At the onset of the novel, the reader begins to learn that Daniel is suddenly paying for the mistakes he made when he was young and the secrets he told no one.

O’Farrell writes an engaging tale with interesting, complex characters.  Another good summer read.

This Must Be the Place is on sale Tuesday, July 19th.

 

 

Taylor, Finn and their ten year old daughter, Snow, are invited by Mike and Lizzie to go to Italy with them.  Lizzie and Finn had a relationship before either of the couples were married.  Taylor is an overprotective, unrealistic mother, and Mike and Lizzie do not have children and have no idea how to relate to them.  This Italian vacations has all the makings of a disaster, which is exactly what happens when the five travelers arrive in Siracusa.

Told from each adult’s point of view, Siracusa is a good summer read-easy, interesting and, at times, a page turner.

Winner of The Pulitzer Prize for fiction as well as several other literary awards, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel is a complex work about Viet Nam shortly after the American withdrawal.  The narrator, who remains nameless throughout, is an  army captain, half French, half Vietnamese working for both the communists and his homeland while assimilating into the American culture.  Leading a somewhat schizophrenic life, he is often unsure who to trust, believe or side with.  In many ways the narrator’s life is like his native country which has been occupied by the French, Americans and communists.

While I admired this novel, I could never immerse myself into the life of the main character.  There were more than a few instances when The Sympathizer was too subjective, too didactic and too self-conscious.