Commonwealth Discussion Guide: Home
Articles, Interviews, and Reviews
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Commonwealth by Ann Patchett review – breathtaking, perceptive and poignantThe Guardian, Sept. 16, 2016.
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In Ann Patchett’s ‘Commonwealth,’ Knotting and Unknotting the Ties That BindNYTimes, Sept. 7, 2016.
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'Commonwealth' Doesn't Need Big Drama To Draw Us InNPR, Sept. 17, 2016.
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Ann Patchett Calls 'Commonwealth' Her 'Autobiographical First Novel'NPR, Sept. 8, 2016.
Other Works by Ann Patchett
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Bel Canto by ISBN: 9780060188733 -
State of Wonder by ISBN: 9780062049803 -
This Is the Story of a Happy MarriageISBN: 9780062236678
Videoes
Discussion Questions
(From the publisher.)
1. How is each child— Cal, Caroline, Holly, Jeanette, Franny, and Albie—affected by the divorce and neglect that results?
2. What does it mean to become a family again in the wake of divorce? How does each child grow to respond to the family difficulties?
3. In what ways are the siblings good for and to each other?
4. Bert believes that his divorce, all the difficulties for the children, and his marriage to Beverly were inevitable. “We’re magic,” he says to her. In what ways might this be true? To what extent does romantic love justify their decision?
5. What influence did the time periods, especially the ’60s and ’70s, have on the behavior and decisions of the characters?
6. What’s added to the novel by the presence of Lomer, Fix’s first partner on the police force?
7. How does the ageing of the four parents—Beverly, Fix, Teresa, and Bert—affect their feelings and behavior regarding each other and the children?
8. Franny falls for Leon Posen because of “the brightness in him.” What might this mean? Why do you think Franny and Leo were willing to overlook their age difference?
9. As adults, Jeanette suggests to Albie, perhaps in jest, that they create a family therapy plan for Holly and their mother. What does it take to repair and rebuild family relationships after so much division and tragedy?
10. What do the various literary allusions (David Copperfield, The Return of the Native, The English Patient, T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock) bring to the novel?
11. After writing his novel based on the life stories of the siblings, Leon Posen says “it’s my book,” while Albie asks, “how did he end up with my life?” What are the ethical and legal issues of the situation? Should there be regulations for writing about others without their consent?
12. Fix believes, “There’s no protecting anyone…keeping people safe…is a story.” To what extent is this true? Why does he believe this?
13. Holly chooses meditation over medication as a way of dealing with her suffering and stress. In what ways is this a healthy response to her life? What of her mother’s question of whether it’s “a real life”?
14. Among other things, Holly is attempting to find inner peace. To what extent does childhood experience determine who we become? How can an unsatisfying or unhealthy self be transformed?
15. Beverly admits late in her life that “other people’s children are too hard.” What does she mean? In what ways is this true or not?
16. Discussing their difficult past, Holly says to Teresa, “you got through it.” What’s the value of this? In what ways does each character go beyond this to remake his or her life?
17. Bert and Beverly’s kiss sets everything in motion for a lot of people who had no choice in the matter. How does that single decision shape everyone else’s life?
Reserve a copy
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Commonwealth by ISBN: 9780062491794
Suggestions for further reading
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A Spool of Blue Thread by ISBN: 9781101874271"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . ." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. -
Carry the One by ISBN: 9781451636888Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidentally hits and kills a girl on a dark country road. For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen and her brother and sister, craft their lives in response to this single tragic moment. As one character says, “When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.” Through friendships and love affairs; marriage and divorce; parenthood, holidays, and the modest calamities and triumphs of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we’d expect. -
After This by ISBN: 9780374168094Alice McDermott's powerful novel is a vivid portrait of an American family in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Witty, compassionate, and wry, it captures the social, political, and spiritual upheavals of those decades through the experiences of a middle-class couple, their four children, and the changing worlds in which they live. While Michael and Annie Keane taste the alternately intoxicating and bitter first fruits of the sexual revolution, their older, more tentative brother, Jacob, lags behind, until he finds himself on the way to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Clare, the youngest child of their aging parents, seeks to maintain an almost saintly innocence.
