‘Commonwealth’ by Ann Patchett starts during a christening party in LA, at the home of Fix and Beverley Keating. An uninvited lawyer called Bert Cousins turns up and is welcomed because he has a large bottle of gin. He's only there to escape his home, where there are three small kids and a pregnant wife. He is taken aback by the beautiful Beverly Keating and enjoys a secret kiss with her - which sets off the chain of events detailed by this book over the next five decades.

‘He knew that making a move on a married woman was a bad idea, especially when you were in the woman's house and her husband was also in the house and the husband was a cop and the party was a celebration of the birth of the cop's second child. He knew all of this but as the drinks stacked up he told himself there were larger forces at work.’

Families

‘Commonwealth’ is a story about the coming together of two families, living between LA and Virginia. The children and parents are colourful and complex characters and Anne Patchett is especially good at describing the bonds between the kids, and how these change as they get older. 

‘Here was the remarkable thing about the Keating children and the Cousins children: they did not hate one another, nor did they possess one shred of tribal loyalty…The six children had in common one overarching principle that cast their dislike for one another down to the bottom of the minor leagues: they disliked their parents. They hated them.’

Holidays

One of my favourite scenes is when the children go on 'holidays' 

One summer, on a trip to Lake Anna, the six children wake in the Pinecone Motel to discover a note from Bert and Beverly: “Have breakfast in the coffee shop. You can charge it. We’re sleeping late. Do not knock.” The note is unsigned, and the children see it as “one more document in the ever-growing mountain of evidence that they were on their own.”

Seeing the morning as an opportunity, the six steal a bottle of gin and Bert’s gun from the glove compartment and set off on a two-mile walk to the lake, first stopping for Cokes and candy bars and to rid themselves of Albie, the youngest and most irritating sibling, by dosing him with Cal’s Benadryl and ditching him in a grassy field.

The five older siblings, free to do what the kids later call “real things,” spend the day swimming and diving from rocks. They return just before their parents awake from a long lie-in.

“The parents seemed not to notice the swimsuits, the sunburns, the mosquito bites. The Cousins children and the Keating children smiled up with beatific forgiveness. They had done everything they had ever wanted to do, they had had the most wonderful day, and no one even knew they were gone.’

Masterful

Ann Patchett is a masterful writer. I've never read her before, but you just feel she knows her characters intimately and I found myself completely at ease with her storytelling. There are also lots of wise and poignant sentences.

“Life, Teresa knew by now, was a series of losses. It was other things too, better things, but the losses were as solid and dependable as the earth itself.”

There is a tragic event at the centre of this story which I won’t spoil by including in this book review, but we learn how the characters have do deal with in their own ways. The ripples of grief and regret still touch the characters in later life, and I felt this to be particularly moving and real.

“There’s no protecting anyone,” Fix said, and reached over from his wheelchair to put his hand on hers. “Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.”

Commonwealth Summary

The family dynamics in this book did make think of 'crossroads' by Jonathan franzen, another book review one from a while back. ‘Commonwealth’ is storytelling of the highest order, by a writer in complete control of her craft. I found this moving, funny, and full of little momments of wisdom, about life, grief, love and all the other stuff in between.

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Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

322 pages

Published September 13th 2016 by Harper

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett Book Club Questions

How do each of the children deal with divorce?

Why do you think the book was called ‘commonwealth?’

How do you think the family dynamics affected how the children reacted to the ‘incident?’

How did the era the book was set in dictate the behaviour of the characters?

How doe the kiss at the start of the book affect everyones else’s life?

“Your guilt’s got nothing on my guilt,” Franny said. “Your guilt isn’t even in the ballpark.” What doe Franny mean by this?

Ann Patchett has said “The very last moment in the book is like a musical note.” What do you think she means by that?