198:. And I think that that being thrown together, being pulled out of a family and put into a family has always been very interesting to me. ... It's so complicated. It's so complicated to figure out who you're going to spend Christmas with.” Noting that many authors’ first novels are based on their own experience, Patchett explained that she had started her career wanting “to prove that I had this great imagination. But the wonderful thing about publishing this book at 52 is that I know that I am capable of working from a place of deep imagination. Now I just feel like I own every part of myself and my life and my imagination and the rocky terrain of my own brain, and that feels really good.”
251:“In someone else’s hands, “Commonwealth” would be a saga, a sprawling chronicle of events and relationships spread out over dozens of chapters. But Patchett is daringly elliptical here. Not only are decades missing, but they're also out of order. We’re not so much told this story as allowed to listen in from another room as a door swings open and closed.” Jeanne Brown, in the
181:, which has come out years after Leon’s death. He is disturbed by the film, and Franny and Caroline, now in their fifties, leave with him in the middle of the movie. Franny gets a phone call from Albie, who is worried about his mother Teresa's health. Franny, Caroline, and Fix check on Teresa and realize that they must take her to the hospital. Teresa dies at the hospital.
230:, but about her own feelings said, “I have a real fear that the whole publication of this novel is going to center around questions of autobiography, .... Most of the things in this book didn't actually happen, but the feelings are very close to home. Or, as my mother said, “None of it happened and all of it's true.”
280:, whose glamorous characters were taken hostage at a birthday party. But a far more common form of involuntary companionship — which doesn't involve guns but often feels like it does — is the blended family. Tolerating your own kin is hard enough. Tolerating someone else’s is harder by a coefficient of 10.” As
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but the jumping-off point for his imagination ... It wasn't her family. No one would see them there.” But, of course, Franny’s sibling and her step-siblings do see themselves there. This famous stranger’s book is a jarring act of exposure and misrepresentation of their most private moments.” Prior to
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Patchett used her own memories in writing this novel, and in it, she raises the question of whether writing fiction based on real events and people is inherently exploitative. The famous novelist in the book, Leon Posen, uses Franny’s childhood memories.“He said that what she had told him was nothing
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Patchett said, “One of the things I'm obsessed with in all my books is time, and I felt that time in my work was contracting. ... and so I was very interested in writing a book that covered more time. ... I wanted to be able to move through time and between characters...” According to Ron
Charles of
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The novel ends with another party thrown by
Beverly, who has divorced Bert and remarried. Franny, married with two step-children, briefly leaves the Christmas party and drives to Bert’s house nearby. After visiting Bert, she stands on his porch and recalls a memory when she and Albie were the only
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The novel moves to Franny's life in her twenties. She works as a cocktail waitress in
Chicago after dropping out of law school. While waitressing, she meets Leon Posen, a famous, much older author, and begins a relationship with him. Leon uses Franny’s childhood, including Cal's death, as material
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Reviewers praised
Patchett’s skill in engaging readers without using the fast-paced plots or exotic locations of her earlier novels. The novel was described as “exquisite,” “masterful,” “breathtaking, perceptive, and poignant,” “tenderhearted and tough, dryly funny and at times intensely moving,”
135:, published in 2016. The novel begins with an illicit kiss that leads to an affair that destroys two marriages and creates a reluctantly blended family. In a series of vignettes spanning fifty years, it tells the story of the six children whose lives were disrupted and how they intertwined.
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said, “Reading “Commonwealth” is a transporting experience, as if you've stepped inside
Patchett’s own juice-saturated memories and are seeing scenes flash by, in all their visceral emotion. It feels like Patchett’s most intimate novel, and is without a doubt one of her best.”
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In an interview entitled "Ann
Patchett Calls 'Commonwealth' Her 'Autobiographical First Novel'," Patchett said, “My parents got divorced when I was young, and my mother married someone who had four children. And we moved to the other side of the country, albeit not to
264:“unpretentious and ultimately heartbreaking, miniaturist but also sprawling” and "full of wit and warmth", as well as "a funny, sad, and ultimately heart-wrenching family portrait," and a wry but compassionate tale of step-siblings forced to become family.
293:, early in the novel “... we’re thoroughly invested in these families, wrapped up in their lives by Patchett’s storytelling, which has never seemed more effortlessly graceful. This is minimalism that magically speaks volumes,” Janelle Brown of the
226:, Patchett said, “I’ve always been writing about my family, but up until now I'd been very clever to hide everyone in giant costumes made out of chicken wire and masking tape.” She had consulted her family before publishing
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to put him to sleep. On one such occasion, Cal, the oldest, is stung by a bee. Without
Benadryl, he dies. Panicked, the children lie about the events leading up to Cal’s death, which remain ambiguous.
276:, “Ms. Patchett has long explored the awkwardness, pain and grace that come when total strangers are forced into unexpected alliances. This theme found its fullest expression in her 2001 best seller,
170:. When Albie, a troubled drifter, reads the book and realizes it is about his life, he is furious and seeks out Leon. Their confrontation leads to the breakdown of Franny and Leon’s relationship.
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The two
Keating children and four Cousins children come together every summer in Virginia. The youngest child, Albie, annoys the other five; the children often give him
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Fix knows from work, arrives uninvited. Bert becomes infatuated with
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467:"Ann Patchett's bravura 'Commonwealth' Traces the 50-year Fallout After an Illicit Kiss"
436:"Close to Home: Ann Patchett on Her New Novel, Writing From Life, and Her Chill Family"
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https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062491794/commonwealth
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