Recent Reviews
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
Some divorces feel like a tsunami. The resulting tidal wave hits the whole coastline, but some communities get hit harder than others. Ann Patchett’s impressive new novel, Commonwealth, explores the effects of divorce on two families. Spanning decades, this novel is like a longitudinal study of the psychological effects of divorce on the six children whose lives were altered by the dismantling of their families.
Set in Los Angeles, the novel opens when thirty-year-old Bert Cousins kisses Beverly Keating at a christening party. A drunken mistake? End of story? No, because within a couple of years Beverly divorces her husband Fix, marries Bert, and moves across the country with her two little girls to live near Bert’s family in Virginia. Fix Keating is left alone in Los Angles. Bert Cousins leaves his wife Theresa and their four small children in Los Angeles. Though I wished that Patchett had explored Bert and Beverly's decisions to abandon their two young families, it seems that Patchett is more focused on the fallout for the kids.
Every summer, the Keating kids visit their dad in L.A. and the Cousins kids visit their dad in Virginia. And there are several weeks when all six kids become a version of the “Brady Bunch” sharing two bedrooms and a bathroom at Bert and Beverly’s house in Virginia. Beverly’s daughters welcome the visit of the four Cousin children. Patchett writes “Here was the most remarkable thing about the Keating children and the Cousins children: They did not hate one another, nor did they possess one shred of tribal loyalty. The six children held in common one overarching principle that cast their potential dislike for one another down to the bottom of the minor leagues: they disliked the parents. They hated them.”
And for good reason: these adults create havoc in their children’s’ lives. Bert and Beverly are self-involved and not present even during these summer visits. Taking care of six young kids is exhausting and so Bert and Beverly abdicate their responsibilities and the older kids fill the void. On a family road trip, Bert and Beverly leave a note under the kids’ motel room door; “Have breakfast in the coffee shop. You can charge it. We’re sleeping late.” The narrator offers, “One more document in the ever-growing mountain of evidence that they were on their own.” When the kids sneak down to the lake with a bottle of gin and a gun they find in Bert Cousins’ car, it becomes clear just how ignored they are.
During one of the summers, Cal, the oldest son of Bert and Theresa, dies. No clear picture emerges of the minute-by-minute specifics of what occurred that day. Caroline, now the oldest, instructs the other kids on what to say to the parents. The adults think that Cal died alone. But the other five kids were there and bear some responsibility for his death. In their guilt and youth, the stepkids adhere to the agreed-upon story. Even thirty years later, it is unclear it the parents know what transpired that summer afternoon.
Patchett keeps the emotion on an even keel in describing Cal’s death – almost too even. There must have been crying and chaos, grief and guilt. Moving deftly in time between the stepkids and parents, Patchett allows the characters to share their perceptions of what happened that summer day. Their adult recollections have been shaped and altered by the passing of time. The surviving five kids are haunted by guilt about Cal’s death. They struggle with relationships, employment, and addiction. The most capable of the clan ends up in a meditation center in Switzerland, breathing in and out the troubling memories of her childhood. In adulthood, each of the Keating/Cousins children flees to their own psychic corner. None of the grown kids live in the same town as each other or any of the four parents. Yet they are still a collection of citizens belonging to the commonwealth of their blended family.
One of the stepkids, Franny Keating, shares the story of her childhood with her boyfriend who is an author. The resulting book is a catalyst for the blended family to move their PTSD to the forefront. Patchett’s engaging writing lets the reader witness the complicated dynamics of the blended and extended family members. Only a writer with Patchett’s skill could capture the feelings and development of so many characters over such a long period of time.
For the Keating/Cousins kids, the complicated trajectory of their future lives was set in motion the day Bert Cousins kissed Beverly Keating. I won’t spoil the ending, but Patchett finds some redemption in the connection of the children to each other amidst the detritus of the parents’ poor decisions.
The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
In this powerful story about a young girl growing up on a rundown horse ranch in Colorado, Aryn Kyle takes us on a ride that is both heartbreaking and hopeful. Alice Winston is 12-years old and lives with her father, Joe, her mother, Marion, and, until recently, her 17-year old sister Nona who eloped with her boyfriend. Alice’s father is struggling to keep the ranch afloat and her mother never leaves the house. Alice feels isolated and confused as she attempts to put the puzzle pieces of her life together. Alice is living her life, but she does not understand it.
The book exquisitely depicts life on a horse ranch and Alice’s internal musings about the people in her life. Alice also learns about human traits such as tenderness, cruelty and indifference by observing the interactions between her horses. She tries to comprehend why her father does what he does, why her mother does not come downstairs, why her sister abandons them, and why her lab partner Polly Cain drowns. The adults that provide the scaffolding of her life are doing the best they can, but they are limited. There is no one on the ranch capable of taking care of Alice’s most basic needs. She wears her sister’s hand-me-downs that are either too big or too small.
Kyle captures the rich complexity of Alice’s interior life as she encounters her immediate family, her grandparents, her classmates, and eventually the rich women who board their horses at the ranch. Alice names this collection of women "the Catfish" and one of the daughters becomes her first friend. Issues of class, adultery, and alienation seep into the interactions at the barn. Though the Catfish provide money to the Winston family, the residue of these womens' dysfunctional lives affect Alice and she feels more confused than ever. Enter Alice’s English teacher, Mr. Delmar. Alice confides in Mr. Delmar and through their conversations, Alice starts to make sense of the world and gain self-confidence.
One night, Alice’s mother Marion asks Alice about her father’s affection for Patty Jo, one of the Catfish. Alice is surprised that her mother knew her father's feelings, She says, “All these years, I had thought we were protecting her, shielding her from the ugly world outside. But now I wondered how I could have ever believed that I was protecting anyone from anything. The world was what it was. There were no secrets. There were only things that went unsaid.”
Kyle’s lyrical writing is both quiet and startling. She offers psychological insights and deep development of Alice's character. There are wonderful quotes that made me reach for my highlighter. When Alice learns from her sister the reason for their mother's retreat to her room, Alice says, “This information, I didn’t have to accept it. Stories get twisted over time. Memories changed shape. It didn’t have to be truth if I didn’t want it to be. The event flashed through my mind and I saw it happen. Real or not, it would stay in my mind, a scar on something that had moments before been flawless. It would be there forever.”
Kyle writes, “Childhood is never over, not really. But the places we come from don’t leave us as easily as we leave them.” No doubt Alice’s growing up will leave her with scars. It is hard to imagine recommending such a bleak book. Yet by the end of the novel, Alice has something she does not have at the beginning: a sense of empowerment. She better understands the choices and behaviors of the people in her life. The puzzle pieces are beginning to come together.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan’s impressive novel astutely explores complicated psychological dynamics. The year is 1962. Edward Mayhew and Florence Ponting are staying at an inn perched on a bluff overlooking Chesil Beach and the English Channel. Here is the first sentence, "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.”
Married that morning, this novel describes their disastrous attempt to consummate their marriage. That Edward and Florence share a deep love for one another is never in doubt. Their connection is honest, playful, and respectful. Yet, they both have psychological dimensions of themselves they have not explored. After a lovely wedding and reception, their fears, expectations, and innocence infiltrate the hotel room and their easy rapport dissolves. McEwan’s precise prose describes the wrenching events and powerful emotions that end the marriage before it begins. His carefully crafted sentences operate on multiple levels. He describes the dominant factors that shaped Edward and Florence’s childhoods and offers insight into their responses to their sexual encounter. He alludes to the possibility that Florence’s father sexually abused Florence. But that possibility has not emerged from Florence’s unconscious. Edward, too, has issues. McEwan writes, ”The language and practice of therapy, the currency of feelings diligently shared, mutually analyzed, and were not yet in general circulation.” Even still, I want to climb into the book and tell Florence and Edward: Take a deep breath. You love each other. You can work this out.
Instead, Florence and Edward withdrawal from each other and develop their separate narratives about what went wrong. Given the high emotion of this intimate encounter, they feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry. Their vulnerability and insecurities prohibit them from authentically sharing their feelings. They lash out, retreat from one another, and return to their prior lives. McEwan describes the multiple layers of miscomprehension: “And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experiences or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all."
McEwan shows us their futures without one another. He reminds his readers that one event or even one evening can change the trajectory of a life. At the end of the book, Edward is in his 60’s and is ruminating about his wedding night 40 years ago: “All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them. Love and patience - if only he had had them both at once - would have surely seen them both through. This is how the entire course of a life can be changed-by doing nothing.” With psychological insight, McEwan provides a vivid portrait of a couple that loves each other - but tragically, in this story, love is not enough.
