She couldn't follow all the lines out in every direction: all the people to whom she was by marriage mysteriously related.
Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
That confused character is Franny, the novel's main character, if there is one. She is a baby at her own christening party when the novel opens, a mature woman well into her 50s when it ends at another family party. The chapters jump around from here to there, finally giving a picture of an American family as complicated as any of them.
At that christening party an uninvited guest named Albert Cousins shows up with a bottle of gin, a most unsuitable christening gift. Bert only wanted an excuse to get away from his own house and his own family on a Sunday afternoon. Soon other alcohol is brought to the party, guests drink too much and by the end Bert is kissing Beverly, Franny's beautiful mother, and an affair begins that leads to the break up of both families.
The six children from the two families often share time together because of custody arrangements. But then new marriages crumble, leading to more divorces, more stepparents and an ever more complicated family.
As if things weren't complicated enough, Franny, in her 20s, has an affair with a prominent novelist, Leo Possen, who is looking for an idea for his next book. Franny's family story becomes the plot for this novel, which is also called Commonwealth. The book complicates her family even more as members start reading it. Years later it is turned into a movie, making everything still worse.
Franny feels guilty for her unplanned role in bringing embarrassment to her own family, just as she is sorry for all the trouble that resulted from that kiss at her christening party. And yet she thinks, too, of all the good that resulted. So it goes with families. Bad marriages result in good children. Youthful indiscretions lead to mature wisdom. Negatives sometimes become positives, and vice versa.
Families are complicated.
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