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. sharply observed, ripe with humour, laden with significance. Patchett deftly summons up a simmering childhood anger and dangerously ricocheting energy The Times Dazzling. Her prose is equally powerful when she's evoking a 1970s summer in Virginia. What is so skilful is the way Patchett makes no moral judgments. 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. A meditation on inspiration, interpretation and the ownership of stories, it is Ann Patchett's most astonishing work to date.Īn outstanding novel. Told with equal measures of humour and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a powerful and tender tale of family, betrayal and the far-reaching bonds of love and responsibility. Franny never dreams that the consequences of this encounter will extend beyond her own life into those of her scattered siblings and parents. When she meets one of her idols, the famous author Leon Posen, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story. In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, has dropped out of law school and is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When Bert kisses Beverly Keating, his host's wife, the new baby pressed between them, he sets in motion the joining of two families whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.

As the cops of Los Angeles drink, talk and dance into the June afternoon, he notices a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A powerful story of two families brought together by beauty and torn apart by tragedy, the new novel by the Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder is her most astonishing yet It is 1964- Bert Cousins, the deputy district attorney, shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited, bottle of gin in hand.

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