Commonwealth
- Author Ann Patchett
- Narrator Hope Davis
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 31 August 2023
- Run Time 10 hours and 34 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, read by Hope Davis.
'Dazzling … life-affirming and compulsively readable' Sunday Times
'Patchett blends wisdom and humanity jointly with the icy forensic gaze of someone not afraid to expose the frailties of human behaviour ... Read it' Jojo Moyes
'An outstanding novel ... a master of her art' Observer
It is 1964: Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited and notices a heart stoppingly beautiful woman. When he kisses Beverly Keating, his host’s wife, he sets in motion the joining of two families, whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.
In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets the famous author Leon Posen one night at the bar, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story…
'Dazzling … life-affirming and compulsively readable' Sunday Times
'Patchett blends wisdom and humanity jointly with the icy forensic gaze of someone not afraid to expose the frailties of human behaviour ... Read it' Jojo Moyes
'An outstanding novel ... a master of her art' Observer
It is 1964: Bert Cousins shows up at Franny Keating’s christening party uninvited and notices a heart stoppingly beautiful woman. When he kisses Beverly Keating, his host’s wife, he sets in motion the joining of two families, whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.
In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets the famous author Leon Posen one night at the bar, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story…
Critics Review
The book that really stood out for me was Ann Patchett’s novel Commonwealth. It’s so beautifully structured, and the characters are subtle and three-dimensional. If she were a man, I’m sure she’d be lauded as one of the Great American Novelists
An outstanding novel ... The opening is a show stopper … Patchett is a pleasure to read: there is a no-fuss casualness to the prose that is only possible when a writer is in control of every word and she is master of her art … What is so skilful is the way Patchett makes no moral judgments ... Brilliant
The opening scene …. is a faultless set piece ... Her prose is equally powerful when she’s evoking a 1970s summer in Virginia … Patchett deftly summons up a simmering childhood anger and dangerously ricocheting energy
Dazzling … sharply observed, ripe with humour, laden with significance … Patchett weaves a complex structure … Yet always feels in control … She is adept at showing, not telling, her characters shimmer with life-likeness, and she pulls you into every one of her vibrantly drawn scenes with great ease … The combination of lightness, warmth and remarkable incisiveness creates a novel that is life-affirming and compulsively readable
The book flows easily between narrators, constantly switching from past to present, and slowly revealing what happened that summer, allowing Patchett to play with memory and perspective to surprisingly moving effect ... Commonwealth is a book about relationships and the obligations they bring .. Poignant ... funny ... An engaging novel that draws you in with sharp observation, a gin-fuelled plot written in beautiful prose and convincing dialogue. You miss the characters once it’s over
Commonwealth is full of heart, and is Patchett’s most complex and emotionally suspenseful novel. She never hits a wrong note although she conjures with many deftly drawn characters. The opening chapter is one of the best party-scene seductions ever written
A deft craftsman … Patchett ultimately wins the reader over with her perceptive qualities, alluring characters and undertone of humour … In Commonwealth, Patchett’s nimble storytelling floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee
Patchett writes excellently and seemingly artlessly, her many sub-stories wandering in and out of each other like rivulets in a stream. Some characters swim into brilliant focus, while others remain dimly lit in the shadows, but Patchett boldly avoids resolving any of it and what emerges instead is the captivating music of life’s random, relentless pulse
So clear and clean and at the top of her game ... It is just so masterfully done. The sweep of it and the subtlety of the ideas
Beautiful
Gorgeously evocative writing and complex characters ... Patchett is a writer of exceptional talent, and this is one of her best yet
This delicate exploration of the ties that bind us never seems to lose focus
An absorbing, brilliantly observed novel
From the mesmerising first chapter to the final page, Ann Patchett’s new novel is utterly brilliant. This domestic drama deals in loyalties, sibling rivalries, jealously and heartbreak in an effortlessly graceful style that makes for unputdownable reading
Rich and engrossing … her observations about people and life are insightful; and her underlying tone is one of compassion and amusement … Patchett also skilfully illustrates the way that seemingly minor, even arbitrary decisions can have long-lasting consequences and the way that we often fear the wrong things
Delicious. From the moment a kiss at a christening ends up sparking the divide and re-merging of two families, I was drawn into the minutiae of the drama ... Patchett makes you feel like you’ve lived among it and have been subsumed into the newly drawn clan
Humourous and heartbreaking, this quietly brilliant collage of a novel also happens to be semi-autobiographical itself
Life-affirming and compulsively readable
She achieves the great novel of American domestic life with a spare hand and a demotic prose that seems to come from the mouths of her characters, even when they aren’t speaking … Her unshowy account of public and private stories addresses the great puzzle of what our lives are really made of ... This novel convinces me she’s wiping the floor with her heftier competitors
All of this will make Commonwealth sound like a domestic novel, and it is – one of the finest in recent memory, which is reason enough to admire it … Part of Patchett’s design is to curve every type, bend every cliché, adulterate every formula … Subtle, startling and painful ... Commonwealth is one of the most discerning novels about siblings I can recall … The novel is alive with provocative insights that sum up entire relationships
She moves effortlessly between perspectives ... Patchett’s own powers are such that the reader is not only never confused, but is wholly convinced by the individuality of each character. Told with great sympathy and even greater wit – it should be said that Commonwealth is very funny indeed – this is a book to savour
A great novel about small moments. Patchett is brilliant at observing those tiny inflections of behaviour that give away so much. She is one of those rare writers, like Anne Enright or Anne Tyler, who is able to convey poignancy and humour in the space of a single sentence … Written with wisdom, concision and compassion: reading it leaves you understanding just that little bit more about what it is to be human
It’s hard to imagine better execution than Patchett’s ... None of the 322 pages lacks a prize-worthy revelation in Patchett’s vibrant prose ... Patchett could wring fiction from a stone. It’s delightful to read
Read Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. Stunning
Seductive ... Exquisitely drawn
This mesmerising novel gripped me from the first page and held me until the last. It’s one of those rare books that is so beautifully written; so cleverly constructed, and with characters who never fail to intrigue, that when you finish it, you feel bereaved
Last, Ann Patchett’s novel Commonwealth, and if you need to ask why, you’ve plainly never read any Ann Patchett. More fool you
An outstanding, tender and honest novel about the complications of blended families without judging or pointing the finger of blame
Would someone please buy me Commonwealth by Ann Patchett for Christmas
Modulating between amusement and poignancy Patchett (a former winner of the Orange prize for Bel Canto) fills her pages with subtly depicted characters and vividly teeming social scenes
The family drama explores not only the metafictional concerns of how writers wreak havoc on their subject matter but the ways that all of us use and abuse the people we love most
An outstanding novel by Orange Prize winner, Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth: A novel is a sprawling, but very precise depiction of two families exploding and coming together, exploding and coming together. It’s hugely entertaining and an unsettling joy to read
Patchett moves through the gears very smoothly, from sexual attraction to disease and violent death. Exciting, and also poignant
Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth, Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation and Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl are three books I’ve read in the last year that I would put a gold shiny GREAT sticker on, without hesitation
Until this year I’d never read Ann Patchett. Her most recent novel, Commonwealth … is an exhilarating and beautifully crafted dissection of an extended family. I’ll definitely be taking another of her novels away with me on holiday this year
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, one of those American novelists (like Anne Tyler, Jane Smiley, Elizabeth Strout) who still knows what fiction is for
Lacking all the tiresome bombast of her American peers, Patchett’s unshowy account of public and private stories addresses the great puzzle of what our lives are really made of. She achieves the great novel of American domestic life with a spare hand and a demotic prose that seems to come from the mouths of her characters, even when they aren’t speaking
Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth takes us west to Los Angeles, starting in the 1960s and forward over three generations, a set of interwoven tales that had me so gripped that I finished it in little more than a single reading and felt propelled to embrace the author with stunned thanks when I found myself unexpectedly sitting next to her
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