Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Wow! This is my first Ann Patchett novel. It won't be the last. In this complicated, forthright novel, Patchett explores the complexity and the deep humanity of family, complicated and pure. It starts at a christening party with a married man, an uninvited guest, stealing a kiss from the beautiful mother of the christened child, and finding it returned. It's love at first sight between two people married to other spouses-and the decades long human reverberations.

Much later, the child christened at that event, Franny, now an English major and a law school dropout, working as a cocktail waitress, serves Leon Posen, a legendary major novelist whose work she has read and admired. Despite the three decades separating them, they become lovers, and over time Franny tells Posen about her fractured and united family, the product of that not quite stolen kiss. There are Franny and her sister Caroline and her four half-siblings: Cal, Holly, Jeanette, Albie. They spend summers together in Virginia, the rest of the year apart, in Virginia and California. Tragedy strikes when Albie dies needlessly in anaphalactic shock.

Over time Franny tells Leon about her complicated, fraught family life. And, artist that he is, he turns it into another wildly successful novel with the title Commonwealth. Franny, among others, is outraged that Leon would turn such private, unresolved, and confidential family information into public material. But seeing their story objectified allows Franny and her sister and half-siblings to come to some resolution. Patchett's novel spans five decades. The story is rich with moments of great beauty and insight about the twists and turns of family relationships. In addition, Patchett's writing is a marvel of straightforward prose laced with delicate nuance