Fiction
‘Commonwealth’
By Ann Patchett
Harper
$28, 336 pages
Ann Patchett’s muscular new novel begins with what might be a miracle.
On a scorching Los Angeles afternoon in 1964, multitudes of thirsty guests are packed into policeman Fix Keating’s bungalow for his daughter’s christening party. Bert Cousins, a lawyer he recognizes but didn’t invite, arrives late bearing a tall bottle of booze.
Father Joe Mike, a priest in the crowd, likens the subsequent allocation of spirits to the miracle of loaves of fishes, then corrects himself: It wasn’t an actual miracle. Bert, however, swears that fate brought him there just so he would meet Fix’s wife.
Later that day, “the magic of gin and orange juice” places Bert and Beverly alone and tipsy in the nursery, where he steals a kiss. “He realized then what he had known from the first minute he saw her … This was the start of his life.”
The intoxicating, multi-layered scene may make you think “Commonwealth” will dwell upon matters of faith or fidelity, but Patchett isn’t known for predictability. Mixing droll wit with heartfelt emotion, the capricious storyline follows the Keating and Cousins families through five decades of upheaval. The whimsical, well-crafted prose makes daring jumps across time and distance as it demonstrates how offhand choices can impact entire communities.
Though “Commonwealth” rarely lingers on any one perspective, the de facto protagonist is Franny Keating, the infant from the party. Franny can’t remember life before the divorce and doesn’t share her older sister Caroline’s vitriol toward Beverly and Bert, who get married and move the girls to Virginia.
This sets in motion a yearly ordeal of flying to visit their dad and interminable summers with their four step-siblings. The dynamic between the kids is startling: “They did not hate one another, nor did they possess one shred of tribal loyalty. … 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 the parents. They hated them.”
Patchett describes the motley Cousins crew with ruthless detail. Sullen Cal, the oldest boy, seethes as the compulsory babysitter. Holly, the pig-tailed people pleaser, has “the kind of Pippi Longstocking looks adults found charming and other kids made fun of.” Albie, practically feral as a toddler, grows into a teenage pyromaniac. No wonder nebbish Jeanette retreats into silence. (“Had anyone had this child tested?” Beverly ponders.)
Scenes from their unsupervised vacations supply many of the novel’s funniest moments, as well as the scariest. A road trip to see Bert’s “extremely unwelcoming parents” in Charlottesville slogs through Hollywood clichés, carsick brats and backseat scraps, but things take a chilling turn at a motel.
When the adults sleep late, the kids set out on foot for a nearby lake. Tensions rise quickly once Cal discovers a pistol in the car’s glove box. Patchett knows her readers recognize Chekhov’s Gun, which creates an opportunity to toy with expectations.
Chekhov comes up a few chapters later when 26-year-old Franny meets Leo, an author she’s long idolized. Leo invites the star-struck waitress to visit frozen Iowa City, launching a May-December affair that restarts his career.
Franny’s stories of the freak accident that killed one of her step-siblings inspire Leo to write a novel called “Commonwealth.” The book’s success opens an ethical can of worms for Franny and her kin, though the backlash doesn’t play out as expected.
Nor does a scene that finds an older Franny trading memories with her elderly father during a chemotherapy treatment. Fix recalls a night on patrol not long after Franny was born. Patchett directs our attention from the ward’s linoleum floors to hazy L.A. asphalt, two young cops laughing in a squad car. As the drugs kick in, Fix takes a quantum leap into the bawdy joke his partner is telling, three scenes melting into one.
In recent years, Patchett has expanded her profile to include bookstore owner, spokesperson for booksellers and co-chair of World Book Night. Passages like this are a rich reminder of the sheer prowess of her storytelling skills.
“This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” her 2013 essay collection, also worked overtime, functioning as a sort of memoir and a meditation on the writing life (two concerns that very much inform “Commonwealth”). Patchett confesses that her novels usually follow the basic plot of Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain”: Strangers bound by happenstance must learn to work together. It’s also the plot of “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Brady Bunch,” which she says she regrets watching.
The sitcom analogy is nearly irresistible here, given the flashbacks to the early ’70s and antics of six step-siblings forced to form a family. But Caroline and Franny Keating aren’t Jan and Marcia Brady. The core details of “Commonwealth” actually echo real life.
Patchett was 5 when her mother divorced her dad, a cop in L.A. They moved to Nashville. Her stepfather’s four kids visited from California on holidays. Patchett calls the novel only vaguely autobiographical, but Fix’s terminal illness comes straight from experiences caring for her late father.
“Commonwealth” bursts with keen insights into faithfulness, memory and mortality. This ambitious American epic can’t exactly settle its questions about privacy and public stories. It does come to a more cohesive and moving point near the finale, as Franny and her sister are called into a medical crisis. The situation hammers home the importance of fellowship, reiterating the notion that later in life, when all the love and rage are forgotten, “family” is what you make of it.
Their act of kindness subtly recalls Father Joe Mike’s riff on loaves and fishes in the opening scene. “Wasn’t that the true miracle? … That the people who had brought their lunches in goatskin sacks, maybe a little more than they needed for their family but certainly not enough to feed the masses, were moved to fearless generosity by the example.”
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