"The Commonwealth" by Anne Patchett-Modern Families Overflowing with Life's Mixed Bag

Anne Patchett is an American novelist (b 1963. She received the PEN/Faulkner & Orange literary prizes for her novel Belle Canto ('02.)  Can't say I agreed with the accolades bestowed on this earlier novel but should her latest, "The Commonwealth" (16) not bestowed literary honors, it will be a colossal oversight.  Patchett's writing is so deceptively brilliant as to keep the reader thoroughly engaged in a fierce tribe of strewn together families.  She makes the mundane seem profound while maintaining an intrigue into the overlapping lives of its multiple characters.  Today's modern families are in constant flux.  The wonder of it all creates a perplexing web in which to follow all the lines in every direction with whom marriages/divorces & time mysteriously connects and dissociates people. Two young families are at the crux of the novel, the Fix family and the Cousins family; aptly named as neither family is maintained in tact & their intertwining mingles them like cousins.   The Fix family is having a christening for their youngest daughter, Fanny when Bert Cousin, father of 3 + 1 one the way,  crashes the christening to escape the tedium of his home.  Bert makes a pass at Beverly Cousins which leads to an affair & their future marriage.  Originally, everyone lived in LA until  Beverly/Bert move with her 2 daughters to Virginia while Theresa (Bert's 1st wife) remains in LA with their 2 sons & 2 daughters.  The familial custody arrangements meld the step-siblings together. Amazingly enough - they don't hate each other.  In fact, they share a common contempt aimed at one or another parent.  The focal point is not on any one individual, but rather on all 6 offsprings throughout their lives and the 3 co-parent Cousins; Bert, Beverly & Theresa.  The term Commonwealth is referenced in multiple ways; as a locale in VA, as a novel/screenplay written of their lives as told to a famous writer (by Fanny to her lover) and as the Native American Indian Tribe; Commonwealth.  This is a beautiful & stirring novel of tribal family affiliations honed through happenstance, camaraderie and the cornucopia of commonalities & inestimable burdens of life.  There are divergent paths caused by the pursuit of one's self-interests that push & pull at family members.  Culling through shared experiences, it's absorbing to note the disparaging validities of events.  One sister "remembered seeing everything in terms of who had less than she did and who had more."  And, one brother believed "The past was always right there with him and so he assumed that everytone else felt the same way."  The 2 spouses whose partners abandoned them maintained an affirmative outlook on life.  "Hope was the blood of life."  And, "The pleasure of a long life is the way some things worked themselves out."