I enjoyed Commonwealth as I read it. Picking it up was easy, flipping pages pleasant, the story engaging. It's only in the time since, when I've tried to think more deeply about it, that I think that it doesn't really do anything with the theme that is trumpeted across the dust jacket. I started to think that you could, in fact, take that out entirely and not lose much. So...it's a good book, but perhaps not a deep one?
We have here the story of fractured and blended families, of relationships between step-siblings, relationships between parents and children in the wake of divorce and remarriage, and how these ties and breaks can persist into adulthood, how who you are is still shaped by your childhood, and what you lost and what you gained in those formative years.
It's also, sort of, about cops and lawyers, but although this lurks in the background, it never really emerges. Franny and Caroline's father is a cop. The father of the other children, (Caleb, Holly, Jeannette and Albie, if I've got it right) is a lawyer. At Franny's baptism party, her mother kisses the lawyer. Soon, they leave their spouses and move to Virginia, with Franny and Caroline in tow, and his children joining them on holidays.
The children pick sides, more or less, and the parents are far from perfect, particularly those who started the affair - it's shown less as fate than as rather self-centered people not caring about others. (The second marriage ends in divorce too, eventually.) But still, the children of two families are forced into each other's company every year, and end up enjoying it. That is, until one child dies under circumstances that are murky throughout much of the novel, and then end up more mundane that I was expecting, given the buildup. I actually kind of like that - what children build up as something that cannot be spoken may not in any way be the same as what adults would think, and so when you find out the reason, it seems relatively paltry.
But that's not what the theme inside the book jacket promises. It heralds a story about who stories belong to, who gets to tell them, and what happens when someone outside the family takes possession of the narrative. And yes, that happens, but it isn't integral to the relationships or what happens to these family members as they age and have families of their own. You could probably take that part out and it wouldn't have much effect on the overall feel of the novel. It's not pointless, but it's not a theme - it's just something else that happens.
Franny, as a young woman, has an affair with a novelist, who, after hearing her story about the summer her step-brother died suddenly, writes it up as a novel which comes out to huge acclaim. Their relationship is warm, for a while, but unequal, and Franny leaves him. One of her step-brothers finds out about the book and is annoyed. Much later, a movie comes out about the book. And it's all interesting, but not much is done with it. It lies at the level of plot, not of connective tissue or thought.
None of that is a problem, except that I was expecting a dive into stories and versions of stories, and ownership thereof, but really, the book coming out does not have a huge effect on anyone. Albie is mad for a few days. Franny and Caroline and their father go to see the movie when it comes out and don't like it. It doesn't really hit anyone where they live.
It's distracting from what this book really does seem to be about, which is how we form connections even without blood relationships, and how family is complicated, and sometimes family is unlovable, and yet there still something there when the chips are down. That's where the heart and the meat of this book is, and it's not bad.
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