An adulterous affair brings two California families uneasily together in this chronicle set over five decadesAnn Patchett’s seventh novel begins in the early 1960s,at Beverly and Fix Keating’s christening party for their daughter Franny. An unexpected guest turns up, with a large bottle of gin in lieu of an invitation. Bert Cousins is a lawyer in the Los Angeles district attorneys office; Fix Keating is a local cop. They barely know each other, and but Bert wants an excuse to escape a domestic with three small children and a pregnant wife. With the help of Berts gin,everyone gets drunk and many lives are changed. Handsome Bert kisses beautiful Beverly, sparking an affair that splits and reconfigures their families. Eventually Bert and Beverly leave their spouses, and marry and spin to Virginia,where their six children reach together each summer.
Commonwealth crosscuts between the lives of the Keating and Cousins families over the next five decades, as tragedy strikes and life unfolds. In her 20s, or Franny Keating begins a relationship with the renowned novelist Leon Posen,a much older man in desperate need of inspiration for a new book. The stories she tells him of her childhood sow the seeds for his bestselling comeback, also entitled “Commonwealth”. The impact of that novel, and the secrets it reveals,spin the threads Patchett uses to stitch together the stories of 10 people: the six Keating-Cousins children and their four parents.
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Source: theguardian.com