Ann Patchett’s 2016 novel Commonwealth hangs on the idea that one impulsive moment causes ripples through two families that will play out over several decades.
The novel opens at a christening party one summer’s day in 1960s California. It’s a hot day, the gin begins to flow freely and sparks fly between lawyer Bert Cousins and the hostess Beverly Cousins. A kiss turns into an affair, divorce and then re-marriage.
Ann Patchett shows the fall out of that moment in the kitchen, focusing especially on how it impacts the Cousins and Keeating children.
Their rivalries, divided loyalties, jealousies and frustrations are played out during the summer holidays they’re forced to spend together. At times they act like warring nations, but occasionally they put aside their differences to form a commonwealth serving their collective needs.
Over the course of some fifty years we witness the ebb and flow of their relationships, disappointments and fresh starts. They eventually grow out of their antipathy to one another, finding instead a shared understanding of their complicated family.
Shifts in time and changes in perspective mean that the histories of the family members come to light almost incidentally. Fifty years elapse between the party in chapter one for example and chapter two when the baby, in whose honour it was held, sits with her father as he awaits chemotherapy. It’s through their reminiscences that we learn what happened after “that” kiss.
At times, the switch in narratorial perspective casts new light on incidents from the past that have already previously been related. Not until the final section of the novel do we learn, for instance, how one of the Cousins’ children died.
Commonwealth shows how stories evolve depending on who tells them —and when. There’s an interesting meta fiction element where one of the children has a relationship with a famous author and tells him her family’s story. It becomes the basis for his novel called Commonwealth, publication of which causes friction with the siblings. It’s their family, their story and their right to tell it — or not —they argue.
Otherwise, Commonwealth was a disappointment. Ann Patchett is a good storyteller and the novel flows easily. There are some wonderful set pieces like the party and a scene where brother and sister sit huddled in a quilt on the doorstep of their home, watching the snow fall.
But there wasn’t enough to keep me engaged. The more family sagas I read, the more I want something more substantive than just what person A felt about person B and how that changed and what this says about the family unit.
I need a strong sense of the period in history through which the characters lived . That seemed completely missing from Commonwealth — the characters there just seemed to exist in a bubble, untouched by world events. Having had too many disappointments with family sagas in the last couple of years, I’m reluctant now to read any more — with the notable exception of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles.
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