Ann Patchett: "Commonwealth"

Ann Patchett's ability to create believable, likeable characters is amazing. In Commonwealth she presents something like 14 vivid characters; maybe more. Her center is a large, blended family with four parents and two or three divorces. The novel spans over 50 years,  meaning that many other partners enter and leave the lives of this huge ménage.

Commonwealth seems to be named for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where we view the critical events in the life of the six children. Besides Virginia, there are scenes in Los Angeles, Chicago, Iowa, New England, Switzerland, and maybe some other places I've overlooked. Further, it's not in precise chronological order, but moves around, sometimes as an ordinary narrative, sometimes as flashbacks.

There are only a bit more than 300 pages for all these developments of time, space, relationships, and themes of love and death and more, including hints that Commonwealth means more than just Virginia. Does this sound like it would make you dizzy? It made me dizzy. But I enjoyed it very much, and in the end it didn't seem that random.

Franny, a daughter of one of the fractured couples, is one of the most in-focus characters in the novel. In fact the first chapter takes place at her parents' home in Los Angeles, where they are celebrating her Christening. There's a free-wheeling atmosphere in this suburban, summery party, where oranges from the back-yard trees are squeezed and mixed with vodka and other booze, and where sandwiches and cookies are devoured by kids and adults.  Of course demons lurk: at the party, Franny's mother meets a colleague of her father and all the children are fated to be shuttled between the resulting rearranged homes.

Food and drinks are always a part of Franny's life. After dropping out of law school, she works as a cocktail waitress at the Palmer House in Chicago (where we stayed a couple of years ago, as it happens: this made the book more vivid for me!) She then lives with a famous writer whose works she loves, perhaps more than she loves him;  he's 32 years older than she is. Another party, in the middle of the book, lasts for weeks during a vacation stay in a mansion in New England.

During this vacation, Franny gets stuck with cooking and shopping for groups of the writer's friends and colleagues, who treat her like a servant and demand that she wait on them, making every one of them a different kind of eggs for breakfast and slaving over dinners while scarcely being noticed. This cringe-inducing sequence of meals is a key to Franny's identity, I think. There are many other keys too as she goes through life relating to her siblings, step-siblings, parents, step-parents, and so on.

The sunny parties in California and the New England vacation house contrast with a wintery party at the end of the novel over 50 years later. Refreshments again are organized by Franny's mother, Beverly, but this time with hired waiters and caterers. The scene at the Christmas party seems to wrap up many of the themes about Franny and her mother that started at the very beginning of the book:

"Franny found her mother at the breakfast table by herself, arranging petits fours on a tray. 

"'You know there are people here who will do that for you,' Franny said.

"Her mother looked up and gave her an exhausted smile. 'I'm hiding for just a minute.' ... 

"Beverly put out the last of the tiny square cakes from the box, pink and yellow and white, each one crowned with a sugared rosette.... 

"Franny picked up a pale-yellow petit four, the color of a newly hatched chick, and ate it in a single bite. It wasn't very good, but it was so pretty that it didn't matter." (p. 311-312)

Palmer House Hilton Hotel where we stayed in Chicago and where Franny worked.