It's difficult to pinpoint what this book is really about. It starts with a focus on the struggle of navigating divorce, but from the man's perspective. Then, it shifts slightly. You realize the narrator isn't the man, but rather a female friend of his who really wasn't around during the failed marriage. Part three of the story then swings over to the ex-wife, transforming the book into a heavily feminist-tinted story about society's views and expectations of married women with children, and the damage that causes.
I've thought about it, and what I think the book is about is the toxicity of expectations. All the characters in this book, no matter whose story we're hearing, are in crisis because they've fallen victim to expectations.
Toby Fleishman is the first one in trouble. He's put everything into his family and his career as a doctor. Now it's all different. He's getting divorced. He has to date again. He has to continually put one thing in his life above another, never in the order that he wants. His heart is wounded from a failure of his partner to feel as much as did.
Rachel, his ex-wife is in crisis simply from overload. She works like a dog to make the money that keeps her family in the higher tier of New York City society. She invests so much time working, communicating with the nanny, and agonizing over her kids' schedules and social calendars. It all has to be perfect. Every exercise class she takes or lunch she goes on helps solidify their social standing. Why couldn't her ex see that?
Elizabeth, our narrator, is friends with Toby from college. They met on a semester abroad in Israel. Now, 20 years later as they're all entering their forties, she's back in his life, happy to have someone to distract her from her own issues. She's not happy as a stay-at-home mom. She struggles with the direction her career went, probably because she's a woman. She's a little tired of putting her family first even though she loves them.
All three characters, and a few others who jump in and out, are all trying to navigate the expectations of life and it's freaking hard. Who can't relate to that? Yes, it's convenient that I'm currently a forty-something with kids stuck at home on coronavirus quarantine, but still, I get it.
This book is complex and beautiful. It's not afraid to give into the rambling narrative that is the mind of a forty-something with kids, a job, and a million priorities. It's what a modern mid-life crisis really is. You no longer go out and buy a red convertible, but rather spend countless hours second-guessing your place in the rat race, whether you're screwing up your kids, or how to hide your aggravation and keep going. These characters feel the struggle in its most heightened way, but perfectly capture what happens when you need to be in five places at once.
In the end, without spoiling things, the outlook looks good for our characters. The crisis feels temporary, but that doesn't mean it wasn't intense. When the book ends, you feel like everyone is going to be okay. It won't be perfect, and it will take a lot of work, but they'll survive without imparting any lasting damage. It feels real.
This is a great book, and I really enjoyed reading it. I think it will speak to a lot of people for a variety of reasons, and highly recommend it.
Second book club book #8
I don't usually read two books by the same author that aren't in a series this close together, but that's the way the book club schedules played out. That, and I may have purposefully put another Patchett book so soon after my last (see The Dutch House,) because I'm really liking her work. It's also nice that her stories are so different even though all the characters feel very real and believable.
While Commonwealth gets off to a confusing start, mostly because it's really a very busy book, it's still so good. The large cast of characters are all dynamic because they're all struggling in some way in an environment seemingly full of pitfalls and trauma. Everyone deals with things differently, but nobody is safe.
It's hard to say who the main characters are, but for me it was about the kids of two sets of parents. Caroline and Franny belong to Beverly and Fix. Cal, Holly, Jeanette, and Albie belong to Teresa and Bert. The kids merge together into one mixed-up family when Beverly and Bert run off together and get married. In the flashbacks, the kids come together at only certain parts of the year, operating as many kids did in the 60's, without much supervision. In the present, we see them as adults, recovering from their childhood and trying to figure out how best to relate to each other and their parents. It's a lot to track.
However who's related to who and how isn't the crux of the book. This is a book about larger themes -- love, devotion, and how family is built through connections and not necessarily blood. It's about bearing the scars of your past while navigating the present, keeping an eye on the future. It's about the universal fact that people are complex beings who can take others to such incredible highs and devastating lows. It's about survival and what happens when someone doesn't make it. It's the daily struggle.
Even though I didn't share many experiences with the characters, I felt a connection to the way they felt because it's all so real. The dysfunction, the good and bad, is all heightened to a certain extent, but it's all out there in the world. I think this is why I like Patchett so much after just two books. She gets what's out there and puts it under a magnifying glass in her books to help show it to others. Another recommended read.
