Commonwealth in Reading with Style

Sep 23, 2016 Juniper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-books

4 ½-stars, if we could do that here.

possibly spoiler-y ahead... just the opening bit, ahead of the blockquote.

chekhov's gun! chekhov's gun!! seriously. checkhov's. gun. and i almost fell for it, but just kept questioning the device too much to be fully blindsided by the inevitable twist. she's clever, that patchett!

But she is up to something far more subtle, startling and painful than that. There is nothing inevitable or fated here, unless it is that actions have consequences, most of which a

4 ½-stars, if we could do that here.

possibly spoiler-y ahead... just the opening bit, ahead of the blockquote.

chekhov's gun! chekhov's gun!! seriously. checkhov's. gun. and i almost fell for it, but just kept questioning the device too much to be fully blindsided by the inevitable twist. she's clever, that patchett!

But she is up to something far more subtle, startling and painful than that. There is nothing inevitable or fated here, unless it is that actions have consequences, most of which are unintended. A person might seem “unbearable”, but then the narrating mind suggests, “maybe that’s the real problem”, that a person who seems unbearable may rather be “emblematic of what can never be overcome”. When the whole tragic power of her story hits the reader, about two-thirds of the way through, the effect is physically breathtaking. Patchett sucker-punches you, but leaves you feeling you had it coming – whether for underestimating her, or her characters, or humanity, is hard to say.*

okay. now that that is out of my system... :)

i love ann patchett. so much. i tend to go into her books hoping i will love them, but i do try to keep my expectations in check, and approach each book freshly and with an open mind. of course, as a patchett fan, it was near-impossible to not be excited about this new novel. heck, it's been one of my most anticipated reads for 2016. and my curiosity was heightened through interviews AP has given, noting this is her first autobiographical novel. that did add an interesting layer to the reading, along with the whole meta thing going on -- the novel features a novelist who has written a new work of "fiction", based on the life of the main characters of AP's book. his novel is also called 'commonwealth'. are you with me still? excellent! this all worked wonderfully for me because i am basically a sucker for any works of fiction which feature writers and writing. i'm not predisposed to automatically liking them all, but i am predisposed being intrigued by these kinds of books and throwing them onto Mt. TBR.

what i find patchett does exceptionally well are the nuances and dynamics of family (She didn't know how to hate her mother yet, but every time she left her father crying in the airport she came that much closer to figuring it out.) and the excavation of the idea of responsibility. (actions have consequences.) she's an insightful writer. she's also very funny, albeit sometimes it's a dark-funny (The priest, whose mind was wandering like the Jews in the desert... or ...people moved to Brooklyn to fall in love and write novels and have children, not to get old, and she couldn't go to Holly, though she imagined dying in the Zen centre might come with spiritual advantages.), which i can fully appreciate. and when themes can get heavy or sad, those moments of levity are terrifically appreciated. i hugely respect how patchett creates complicated, messy characters. i feel as though she is writing openly and realistically when she creates characters who could be hard to embrace by some readers, but i also feel she has tremendous empathy for those she is creating.

my only real criticism of the novel is that i would have loved a bit more depth/story from each of the members of the keating-cousins families. jeannette, for example, who completely intrigued me. and albie. oh, albie. but, really, apart from franny who functions as the novel's centre and presented as a more complete character (save for one thing that was really left dangling), i would have been down for so much more on this whole family. but -- that is just my very minor quibble. i was so engaged with the book, and fairly tore through it as i had a hard time putting it down. so, i hope you will read this book, and that you will let me know what you think when you do. i think this will be a book i recommend to many people.

* -- excerpted from sarah churchill's uber-gushy review in the guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... ...more

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