Commonwealth

“Your mom doesn't know about the movie, does she?"

"My mom doesn't know about the book," he said. "It turns out a novel isn't the worst place to hide things.”

I've never read Ann Patchett before, but based on Commonwealth, I'd happily go back for more. Reading other reviews, this kind of family drama doesn't seem to be Patchett's usual oeuvre (and from reading these other reviews I've learned that this is the first time she's written about her own family dramas), but even without prior exposure it's plain to see that this book is a mature work by a talented author. Although the line-by-line writing didn't dazzle me (something I usually insist on to grant four-plus stars), the construction and overall effect of the narrative definitely pushes my reading experience from “like” to “love”. As it was the surprises along the way that most delighted me, I'll try hard to not reveal any spoilers, but it would probably be better for any potential readers to go into this book as cold as I did. 

The six children held in common one overarching principle that cast their potential dislike for one another down to the bottom of the minor leagues: they disliked their parents. They hated them.

Commonwealth might almost be thought of as a collection of related short stories, each long chapter being a self-contained vignette plucked from the narratives of two entwined families. As the book begins, Fix and Beverly Keating are hosting a christening party for their daughter Franny when Bert Cousins arrives, uninvited and barely known to the host, with a large bottle of gin and a desire to escape the Sunday afternoon family time expected of him by his pregnant wife and three young children. As the reader is thrown into the medias res of a scorching afternoon full of characters we'll only barely glimpse before moving on, the brief spotlight shone upon Beverly – is she, in her yellow sundress and French twist, really the most beautiful woman anyone there would have seen in real life? – and on boyish Bert in his shirtsleeves – compliantly hand-squeezing every orange plucked from every neighbourhood tree – alerts (alarms?) the reader that something transformative is afoot; yet it all ends so gently and innocently. This opening salvo was a perfectly glittering and satisfying introduction, so I was totally jarred when the next chapter is fifty years in the future, and in a conversation about the events of that first chapter between Franny and Fix, she says to her father, “Hey, you never told me that part of the story before”, and reveals that everything might not have been as it seemed. In this way, each chapter concerns family stories (as they happen or in retrospect), and often, a character will remark this this is the first time she's hearing of something or noting when it was he first learned something that was assumed to have been a family secret. 

All the stories go with you, Franny thought, closing her eyes. All the things I didn’t listen to, won’t remember, never got right, wasn’t around for. All the ways to get to Torrance.

On the other hand, a chapter about the six young children wanting to go to the lake while their parents are napping starts as a foreboding tale – A gun? A bottle of gin? A baggie of Benadryl? – and I was intensely interested to know what was going to happen. The fact that it all turns out fine is a huge misdirection for when later these same elements – the gun, the gin, the Benadryl – lead to a tragedy. It takes the entire book to circle back and fill in the details of the fateful afternoon that would change everyone's lives; and again, this leads to an examination of family stories and who knows what and who can keep a secret.

“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.” 

And here's the spoilerish bit that I didn't see coming but is nagging at me to be acknowledged (forewarned!): When she's in her twenties – freshly dropped out of Law School and at loose ends – Franny meets and becomes involved with Leon Posner; a famous ageing novelist whose work Franny had studied intensely as an English Major undergrad. Over time, Franny tells Leon the story of her tumultuous childhood – including the details of the tragedy that the children swore to keep secret – and although she wasn't totally surprised when he used her story as inspiration for his next novel, entitled “Commonwealth”, the book's release has a not unexpected impact on her siblings. Since, as already noted, this is the first of Patchett's own novels in which she uses the details of her own tumultuous childhood, it's hard to tell if the use of the Leon character is more apology or explanation: when it comes to family stories, who owns them? Is all of fiction a type of exploitation? When one of the (now adult) children confronts Leon for depicting him without permission, the author is adamant that even if all of the details are lifted directly from Albie's childhood, the resulting story is a product of his own imagination. There's something to think on further there. And a quibble: it's stated that neither Fix or Teresa ever read the book or saw the incriminating part of the movie (although Jeanette apparently told her mother the truth years earlier), but it's never noted one way or the other whether Beverly or Bert discovered the truth about the tragedy because of Leon's book; any fallout would seem to have been an important part of the family stories, but it's totally absent. Did not even one friend or relative of the parents ever stumble across an award-winning novel written by Franny's one-time lover, recognise the part of the story they would have known, and think to comment, “That's a heck of a thing that actually happened that day”?

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.

And that's the thing about family stories: it's the losses and hardships that make for the best storytelling, and the circular nature in which Patchett brings the full narrative of these to light in Commonwealth is a fine bit of craftsmanship. I was never bored – often intensely interested – and she had much of interest to say about families and relationships and all the ways we fail each other. I will definitely pick her up again.