Rebecca's Reviews > Commonwealth

Previously I’d always preferred Patchett’s nonfiction to her fiction. However, this, for me, was much better than Bel Canto and State of Wonder. As a deep study of blended family dynamics, it reminded me of Jonathan Franzen, as well as This Must Be the Place (Maggie O’Farrell) and The Green Road (Anne Enright). Like those two, it shifts elegantly between times and places, often without any overt triggers like a date heading or a chapter break.

It all starts with an early 1960s christening party Los Angeles policeman Fix Keating is throwing for his younger daughter, Franny. DA Bert Cousins turns up, uninvited, with a bottle of gin the grateful guests quickly polish off in their fresh-squeezed orange juice. He also kisses the hostess, sparking a chain of events that will rearrange the Keating and Cousins families in the decades to come. It’s a wonderfully Mad Men-esque opening sequence, never quite matched by what follows, although some later scenes with Franny come close.

The novel spends time with all six step-siblings, but Franny is definitely the main character – and likely an autobiographical stand-in for Patchett (anyone familiar with This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage will recognize some particulars, like the L.A. cop scene). As a waitress in Chicago, she meets a famous novelist who’s in a slump; the story of her childhood gives him his next bestseller but forces the siblings to revisit a tragic accident they never fully faced up to. “We were such a fierce little tribe,” stepsister Holly remembers. It’s intriguing to see the different places life takes them, ranging from law school to a Buddhist center in Switzerland.

This is a sophisticated and atmospheric novel I would not hesitate to recommend to literary fiction fans in general and Patchett fans in particular. Releases September 13th.