A wife and mother has an affair with a husband and
father. They end up marrying. Six children find themselves in a
blended family, literally so when the man’s four children travel
across the country to spend every summer with him and their
stepmother and stepsiblings.
Patchett’s seventh novel explores, nonchronologically, how the
rearrangement affects the six offspring and four adults over the
next half century. It is about family’s ability to hold us
together and tear us apart. It’s especially interesting on the
subject of betrayal. Franny, perhaps the main character, shares
her family’s story with a lover who is a famous novelist. He
claims it as material for his next book, which he calls Commonwealth,
comparing the blended family with a political association of
states voluntarily united for the common good.
Except for an accidental death, Commonwealth deals in
ordinary moments more than drama. Patchett’s writing style is
understated. Her characters are unexceptional people, some of them
not always likable. Yet Commonwealth is not dull in the
least, for these low-key parts add up to an insightful and
realistic portrayal of family, love, and life.
In an NPR interview, Patchett said that Commonwealth was
her first novel in which she allowed herself to mine her own
experience. Her parents divorced when she was young, her mother
married a man with four children, and they moved across country.
“Being pulled out of a family and put into a family has always
been very interesting to me,” she said. “It's so complicated.”
Also, like Franny in Commonwealth, Patchett was criticized
by the siblings of a late friend whose private life she wrote
about (in the memoir Truth and Beauty: A Friendship).
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