Commonwealth

I heard Ann Patchett interviewed about her new novel on NPR. Having just blogged about my adopted state of Minnesota in Wintering (see previous post), I was drawn to the possibility of blogging about my home state since Commonwealth takes place partly in Virginia.

As far as the opportunity to enjoy another familiar setting, Commonwealth was a disappointment. The sense of place is as absent in Commonwealth as it is present in Wintering.  In addition, Commonwealth is not as compelling or well written as Wintering. It's a fairly commonplace, popular-style novel without great distinction. However, it has enough redeeming features to make it worth a read. I read it all in one day.

One thing I confirmed for myself is how much I despise reading about drugs and alcohol, especially when kids are involved. I almost stopped reading The Goldfinch (see Oct. 2014) for exactly that reason.

Like Wintering Commonwealth is a web of multiple storylines, flash-forwards, flashbacks, and memories that challenge the reader to keep track of characters, settings, and chronology. Like Wintering it's a family drama, but Commonwealth keeps its focus on just two generations. It begins with Franny Keating’s christening party and ends with Franny, as a wife and mother, remembering a private moment with her younger stepbrother when she was an adolescent.

In between, Franny's parents divorce, her mother moving to Virginia with her new husband, her father staying in California where Franny was born.  Franny and her older sister Caroline live with their mother, spending just two weeks each summer with their Dad, but their step-father's four children spend the whole summer in Virginia with their Dad, allowing for extended time as a blended family of eight.

Neither parent of this blended family is what I would consider very responsible in the child supervision department, and so readers are subjected to extended periods of holding our breath wondering if these mischievous, risk-taking, unsupervised kids are going to survive their multiple misadventures, which involve a gun, drugs, alcohol, and what I would consider generally dangerous behavior, especially for their young ages.

As it turns out a tragedy does eventually occur, and, as if divorce and disruption were not enough to scar these young lives, this tragedy continues to haunt them. Nevertheless, as we watch them grow into adulthood, it is amazing how well they turn out, despite some of their continuing misadventures.

So, we have the coming of age story of six young innocents, one of whom doesn't reach adulthood, living through their parents' messy lives, plus their own failures and missteps, five of them at least coming to terms, each in their own way, with the dark side of life, finally achieving some semblance of responsible maturity, even caring for their flawed, aging parents and step-parents.

More than a group coming of age story, though, Commonwealth makes a positive case, in the end, for the modern family, with all its complicated relationships, adultery, divorce, remarriage, etc., and the human resiliency, not just to survive, but to thrive. That modern family includes, not only the blended family, but also the multicultural family, as Franny marries an East Indian and one stepsister marries an African. The only thing missing is a gay couple.

What makes Commonwealth truly distinctive though is another storyline, in which Franny meets a popular author, falls in love, and, in need of reassurance from this man she has long admired, shares her family's personal story, which the author proceeds to turn into a successful novel. When her younger stepbrother coincidentally reads the novel and recognizes their family, he feels betrayed. Their private lives have become fodder for literary gain. A confrontation ensues and while Franny's relationship with the author does not survive, her relationship with her stepbrother and the rest of her family does, testifying to the strength of family ties that bind, even when they're not based on blood relations.

In her NPR interview Ann Patchett revealed that Commonwealth is based on her own experience growing up in a blended family. Thus the sub-plot of fiction based on personal experience becomes a meta-commentary on the ethics of the autobiographical novel, of exploiting the lives of real people for artistic purposes, and of invading privacy in general. It is curious how self-referential Commonwealth thus becomes, especially since the fictional famous author, for all his arguments on behalf of imagination over documentation, emerges as less sympathetic than the aggrieved family members. 

Without presuming to speculate on the significance of this storyline to Ann Patchett's own experience publishing a novel based on her personal family life, I will simply note how it gives Commonwealth a twist that raises it above the merely pedestrian popular novel.

To conclude, I'll just comment on the title. I was struck, of course by the reference to the "Commonwealth" of Virginia, but in a larger sense the novel captures the shared lives, relationships, and ties that bind; the shared history and shared guilt of extended, blended family; and it reminds us that it is the sharing, not so much what is shared, that constitutes the wealth.

The Scent of Rain and Lightning

Previous posts noted how Charles Dickens successfully combined popular appeal with literary value (see Apr. 17, 2011, and Dec. 17, 2012). I doubt that Nancy Pickard will ever achieve the status of Dickens, but her 2010 novel, The Scent of Rain and Lightning, is a good example of how popular fiction can provide aesthetic appeal as well as entertainment, address timeless themes, and offer social commentary.

Part family saga, part detective story, part revenge tragedy, part coming of age, part love story (a la Romeo and Juliet), part adultery narrative, part moral lesson, the novel combines all these genres in a compelling way and enhances the whole with interesting structural twists and a spectacular rendering of landscape on the Kansas plains.

The Linders are the socially prominent family of Rose, Kansas, and environs.  Their cattle ranch is prosperous, their reach is wide, and their three sons stand in line to sustain the family name, wealth, and power.  Their daughter establishes a successful history museum in an abandoned bank building and marries a lawyer, who lends his expertise to the family system.

One morning in 1986, after a furious thunderstorm, during which the family becomes separated, the Linders’ eldest son is found shot to death in his home, in Rose, and his wife’s bloodied sundress is found in an empty vehicle off a road out of town.  She is nowhere to be found.  Their three-year-old daughter is safe with her grandmother at the ranch, where she had spent the stormy night.  Suspicion immediately falls on Billy Crosby, who carries a grudge against the family, though there are some folks who claim he was too drunk that night to commit any crime.

Nevertheless, the LInders seek revenge against Billy, who had vandalized their ranch and killed one of their cows, and their influence, plus the inexperience and incompetence of the local sheriff, results in a successful prosecution and sentencing of Billy to many more than 23 years in in prison, but 23 years later his son, a lawyer, has his sentence commuted because of investigative and prosecutorial errors.

Upon his return to Rose more violence ensues as his wife is shot to death and Billy seeks revenge against the Linders.  Billy is sent back to prison, but life in Rose does not return to normal.  New evidence regarding the 23-year-old crime comes to light and the true culprit is revealed, once again destroying the stability of the Linder family.

Parallel to the detective story and revenge tragedy is an initiation plot.  Jody Linder, who lost her parents at the age of three, has grown up, gone to college and returned to teach high school in Rose.  Her coming of age has unfolded in the wake of early trauma.  As the opening line of the novel states, “Until she was twenty-six, Jody Linder felt suspicious of happiness.”

How will she come to terms with the violence done to her family in 1986; the release of the man she always held responsible for the loss of her parents; her discovery of the role of her family in the injustice done to Billy; the violence that erupts after Billy’s return; and the shocking revelation of the truth of what happened to her parents?  Will she emerge from all the trauma, pain, deception, and suffering as a mature woman able to trust in happiness?  Or, will she forever remain suspicious and bitter, unable to escape the legacy of her past and her family?

The love story here intersects with Jody’s initiation into the dark side of life, for the person for whom she has harbored a long-standing attraction is none other than the son of Billy Crosby.  They had avoided each other as children, but were always drawn to each other by a common bond.  Who else could understand the childhood trauma they had both experienced?  Yet, as in Romeo and Juliet, their families are enemies.  After Billy’s murder of a Linder ranch hand, following his return from prison, and his second attempt to vandalize the Linder ranch by starting a grass fire, Jody despairs of ever seeing Collin again.

Just a few months later, however, after Billy’s innocence in the loss of Jody’s parents has become known, she is able to confide to her family that she and Collin have been secretly seeing each other.  At the end of the novel it appears that a family reconciliation is possible without the sacrifice of the young lovers, as is the case in Shakespeare’s tragedy.  Indeed, as in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (see previous post of Feb. 2012), it seems the two young people have it within them to redeem their parents.

But why would Jody’s parents need redemption?

At this point the love story intersects with the adultery plot, for Jody’s mother, on that fateful night, thinking her husband was on business in Colorado, had sent her daughter to spend the night with grandmother Linder and arranged an adulterous tryst at her home.  When Jody’s father comes home unexpectedly, violence erupts.  Her father is killed and her mother disappears. As with most adultery narratives, the cheating wife is punished, and we do eventually find out the fate of Jody’s mother.  Her partner in deception is also found out and punished.

By the time all is revealed Jody has learned that her mother was immature, shallow, flirtatious, and even guilty of petty theft from her in-laws.  Having been raised by her grandparents, Jody turns out more like her more honorable father.

Thus, as Collin, having been raised by his more honorable mother, redeems his father, Jody redeems her mother.

The adultery plot obviously delivers a moral lesson, but that’s not the only one.  There is a message about the wages of deception, class bias, abuse of power, and revenge. 

As revenge tragedies typically demonstrate, one act of revenge leads to another, unleashing a cycle of violence.  In this case, revenge also short circuits the legal system, obscuring the truth, reinforcing deception, and postponing the achievement of justice.

The cycle of revenge can only be redirected by an act of forgiveness.  And in this case that comes from the younger generation, when Collin forgives the Linders for helping to falsely imprison his father, and when Jody (and we trust her whole family) forgives Collin for being Billy Crosby’s son.  Perhaps more importantly, Jody forgives her family for the injustice they perpetrated against Billy Crosby, an act which leads to the burden of hate and fear she feels toward the Crosbys and of ignorance about the fate of her mother and the truth behind her father’s death.

 It is forgiveness and love that ultimately breaks the cycle of revenge, violence, and deception.  Similarly, the romance between Jody and Collin overcomes the class conflict that leads to abuse of power on one side, resentment on the other, and social prejudice on both sides.

In addition to the moral lessons embedded in it, the detective story ultimately explores the complex relationship between order and disorder.  The seeds of the crime are usually found beneath the surface of apparent order, and out of the disorder of the crime emerges the order of truth and justice.  Psychologically, the detective story allows us to process our own fear of the consequences of hidden disorder and reassures us that order can ultimately be restored.  In The Scent of Rain and Lightning it takes 23 years for these complexities to play out.

But the novel is more than a morality tale, a psychological thriller, an initiation narrative, a love story, and a revenge tragedy redeemed by love and forgiveness, though it is all those things.  It is also an ingeniously structured narrative with two flashbacks to 1986 embedded in the 2009 drama of Jody confronting her past, discovering the truth, and finding her future.  The night of the powerful storm, the adulterous tryst, the death of Jody's father, and the disappearance her mother occurs at the textual center of the novel.  But the Kansas landscape with its unpredictable weather provides a symbolic backdrop to the entire narrative.  And the powerful image of Testament Rocks rising from the plains serves as a reminder of the timeless human story, of which that of the Linders and Crosbys is but one more iteration.

My one criticism would be that some parts, especially those dramatizing Jody's emotional reactions, seem overwritten, but that is no worse than what you might find in a Dickens' novel.