Tom's Two Cents : Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett's new novel, "Commonwealth," is the story of two modern families in crisis--the result of a divorce in each family that affects six children.  Franny, the younger in one family, has just been christened when the novel begins, and Albee, the youngest of four in the other family, is yet to be born.  A stolen kiss and immediate electric shock (a bit dorky, it seems to me) between Franny's beautiful mother, Beverly, and Bert Cousins, an uninvited guest at the christening party, starts the whole ball rolling, but the story is much less about them or their respective spouses than it is about Cal, Holly, Jeanette, and Albee; Caroline and Franny.  In the best modern tradition, the story of the developing lives of these six children hops, skips, and jumps all over the place, as this old reader, anyway, tries desperately to keep them straight.

Actually Franny Keating carries the greater part of the story.  An engaging, yet perplexing law school dropout, she is a cocktail waitress in Chicago at the famous Palmer House, when she accidentally meets Leonard Posen, a famous author, and later begins an affair with him that more or less dominates the middle part of the book.  I say "more or less," because it seems to me that Patchett is quite determined not to linger too long over any one story line.  Just when one thinks she is finally focusing on one of her many possible protagonists, she is off to another, and usually somewhere in the confusing middle of their story.  Things get really complicated when some of the children marry and have children of their own, while others simply go off the beam, or, in one case, mysteriously die.

Patchett is too facile a writer to induce such a wandering plot accidentally, so I will conclude that it's her deliberate intention to do so, to express her dismay over how six children's lives are so affected by what appears to be a random, romantic moment in the lives of the father of one set and the mother of the other set.  At times both sets of children "hate" their parents, but not each other.  They are too caught up in the dynamics of trying to become one of those increasingly modern things: a "blended" family. 

This book is nothing like Patchett's "Bel Canto" or the more recent "State of Wonder."  We are forever in the less than exotic settings of the modern states of Virginia and California, where one can literally pick the oranges off the trees.  Oranges are, in fact, a predominant motif in the book, and a very prominent part of the dust jacket.  A symbol, you ask?  Certainly!  But I will leave it to you to figure that one out.