Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

A powerful story of two families brought together by beauty and torn apart by tragedy, the new novel by the Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder is her most astonishing yet.

The christening party took a turn when Albert cousins arrived with gin…

It is 1964: Bert Cousins, the deputy district attorney, shows up at Franny Keating's christening party uninvited, bottle of gin in hand.

As the cops of Los Angeles drink, talk and dance into the June afternoon, he notices a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. When Bert kisses Beverly Keating, his host's wife, the new baby pressed between them, he sets in motion the joining of two families whose shared fate will be defined on a day seven years later.

In 1988, Franny Keating, now twenty-four, has dropped out of law school and is working as a cocktail waitress in Chicago. When she meets one of her idols, the famous author Leon Posen, and tells him about her family, she unwittingly relinquishes control over their story. Franny never dreams that the consequences of this encounter will extend beyond her own life into those of her scattered siblings and parents.

Told with equal measures of humour and heartbreak, Commonwealth is a powerful and tender tale of family, betrayal and the far-reaching bonds of love and responsibility. A meditation on inspiration, interpretation and the ownership of stories, it is Ann Patchett's most astonishing work to date.

This novel convinces me she's wiping the floor with her heftier competitors’ - Linda Grant, Daily Telegraph

An outstanding novel ...she is master of her art .... Brilliant - The Observer

Born in California, Ann Patchett’s first published work was in the Paris Review before she released her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. It was her third novel, based on the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis, Bel Canto, that really made her name, with the book receiving the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her other novels include State of Wonder, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Commonwealth.