'Dazzling … The combination of lightness, warmth and remarkable incisiveness creates a novel that is life-affirming and compulsively readable' Sunday Times
Ann Patchett is the author of six novels and three works of non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times; with The Magician’s Assistant in 1998, winning the prize with Bel Canto in 2002, and was most recently shortlisted with State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.
Patchett blends wisdom and humanity jointly with the icy forensic
gaze of someone not afraid to expose the frailties of human
behaviour ... Read it
*Jojo Moyes*
Part of Patchett’s design is to curve every type, bend every
cliché, adulterate every formula … Subtle, startling and painful
... Commonwealth is one of the most discerning novels about
siblings I can recall … Alive with provocative insights that sum up
entire relationships
*Guardian*
Stunning
*Sunday Times*
Hugely entertaining and an unsettling joy to read
*Irish Times*
An outstanding novel ... The opening is a show stopper … Patchett
is a pleasure to read: there is a no-fuss casualness to the prose
that is only possible when a writer is in control of every word and
she is master of her art
*Observer*
The opening scene …. is a faultless set piece ... Her prose is
equally powerful when she’s evoking a 1970s summer in Virginia …
Patchett deftly summons up a simmering childhood anger and
dangerously ricocheting energy
*The Times*
Patchett writes excellently and seemingly artlessly
*Daily Mail*
Dazzling … sharply observed, ripe with humour, laden with
significance … Her characters shimmer with life-likeness, and she
pulls you into every one of her vibrantly drawn scenes with great
ease … The combination of lightness, warmth and remarkable
incisiveness creates a novel that is life-affirming and
compulsively readable
*Sunday Times*
The book flows easily between narrators, constantly switching from
past to present, and slowly revealing what happened that summer,
allowing Patchett to play with memory and perspective to
surprisingly moving effect ... Commonwealth is a book about
relationships and the obligations they bring .. Poignant ... funny
... An engaging novel that draws you in with sharp observation, a
gin-fuelled plot written in beautiful prose and convincing
dialogue. You miss the characters once it’s over
*Evening Standard*
She achieves the great novel of American domestic life with a spare
hand and a demotic prose that seems to come from the mouths of her
characters, even when they aren’t speaking … Her unshowy account of
public and private stories addresses the great puzzle of what our
lives are really made of ... This novel convinces me she’s wiping
the floor with her heftier competitors
*Daily Telegraph*
Commonwealth is full of heart, and is Patchett’s most complex and
emotionally suspenseful novel. She never hits a wrong note although
she conjures with many deftly drawn characters. The opening chapter
is one of the best party-scene seductions ever written
*Louise Erdrich, author of The Beet Queen*
She is one of those rare writers, like Anne Enright or Anne Tyler,
who is able to convey poignancy and humour in the space of a single
sentence
*Irish Times*
So clear and clean and at the top of her game ... It is just so
masterfully done. The sweep of it and the subtlety of the ideas
*Esther Freud*
Beautiful
*Observer*
From the mesmerising first chapter to the final page, Ann
Patchett’s new novel is utterly brilliant. This domestic drama
deals in loyalties, sibling rivalries, jealously and heartbreak in
an effortlessly graceful style that makes for unputdownable
reading
*Sunday Express*
Gorgeously evocative writing and complex characters ... Patchett is
a writer of exceptional talent, and this is one of her best yet
*Good Housekeeping*
A deft craftsman … Patchett ultimately wins the reader over with
her perceptive qualities, alluring characters and undertone of
humour … In Commonwealth, Patchett’s nimble storytelling floats
like a butterfly and stings like a bee
*Literary Review*
This delicate exploration of the ties that bind us never seems to
lose focus
*Stylist*
An absorbing, brilliantly observed novel
*Women & Home*
Rich and engrossing … her observations about people and life are
insightful; and her underlying tone is one of compassion and
amusement … Patchett also skilfully illustrates the way that
seemingly minor, even arbitrary decisions can have long-lasting
consequences and the way that we often fear the wrong things
*New York Times*
Delicious. From the moment a kiss at a christening ends up sparking
the divide and re-merging of two families, I was drawn into the
minutiae of the drama ... Patchett makes you feel like you’ve lived
among it and have been subsumed into the newly drawn clan
*Grazia*
Humourous and heartbreaking, this quietly brilliant collage of a
novel also happens to be semi-autobiographical itself
*Mail on Sunday*
Life-affirming and compulsively readable
*Sunday Times*
Told with great sympathy and even greater wit – it should be said
that Commonwealth is very funny indeed – this is a book to
savour
*The Lady*
At the heart of a novel is a family story that is appropriated by
another character – an author – the consequences of which ripple
out to every family member
*Guardian Readers' Books of the Year*
I want to tell you how good Ann Patchett is. She’s classy. She
reminds me of Anne Tyler – superb at domestic details and very
ambitious
*Evening Standard*
Patchett moves through the gears very smoothly, from sexual
attraction to disease and violent death. Exciting, and also
poignant
*Independent*
When the tragic power of the story hits the reader, the effect is
breathtaking. Patchett sucker-punches you, but leaves you feeling
you had it coming – whether for underestimating her, her
characters, or humanity, it is hard to say’
*Guardian*
An outstanding novel … The opening is a show stopper ... Patchett
is light, incisive and all-seeing ... She lets readers reflect on
what is involved in stealing from life: emotional copyright is, in
this unpushy and brilliant novel, more powerful than anyone dared
suppose
*Observer*
Ann Patchett's cleverly crafted Commonwealth is one of her best,
which for this writer is saying a great deal
*Sydney Morning Herald, Books of the Year 2017*
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