Commonwealth
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4.1 • 56 Ratings
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
'Dazzling … life-affirming and compulsively readable' Sunday Times
'Patchett blends wisdom and humanity jointly with the icy forensic gaze of someone not afraid to expose the frailties of human behaviour ... Read it' Jojo Moyes
'An outstanding novel ... a master of her art' Observer
It is 1964: Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited and notices a heart stoppingly beautiful woman. When he kisses Beverly Keating, his host's wife, he sets in motion the joining of two families, whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.
In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets the famous author Leon Posen one night at the bar, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Patchett (State of Wonder) draws from personal experience for a funny, sad, and ultimately heart-wrenching family portrait: a collage of parents, children, stepchildren, siblings, and stepsiblings. In 1960s California, lawyer Bert Cousins divorces Teresa, leaving her to raise their four children alone; Beverly Keating divorces Fix, an L.A. cop; and Bert and Beverly marry and relocate to Virginia with Beverly and Fix's two children. Visiting arrangements result in an angry, resentful younger generation rebellious Cal, frustrated Holly, practical Jeannette, littlest Albie, bossy Caroline, kind-hearted Franny spending part of summer vacations together. Left unsupervised, Cal takes charge, imitating grown-ups by drinking and carrying a gun, until a fatal accident puts an end to shared vacations. Patchett follows the surviving children into adulthood, focusing on Franny, who confides to novelist Leo Posen stories of her childhood, including the secret behind the accident. Twenty years after that conversation, middle-aged with children and stepchildren of their own, Franny and Caroline take 83-year-old Fix to see the movie version of Leo's novel about their family. Patchett elegantly manages a varied cast of characters as alliances and animosities ebb and flow, cross-country and over time. Scenes of Franny and Leo in the Hamptons and Holly and Teresa at a Zen meditation center show her at her peak in humor, humanity, and understanding people in challenging situations. What's more challenging, after all, than a family like the Commonwealth of Virginia, made up of separate entities bound together by chance and history?
