When I read my first Ann Patchett book when I was about 19, it was love from the very start. My grandmother, Bebe, insisted that I read this book, Truth and Beauty. She gave me her paperback copy, but we left it at that. I kept it for several months until one day, for whatever reason, I decided to read it. Little did I know I would carry that story with me forever. I think of Ann Patchett’s telling of her friendship with poet Lucy Grealy at least once a week; such is the way that Ann Patchett’s telling of anything haunts me.
Whenever the store gets an advanced reader copy of Ann Patchett’s work, I am one of the first to try and snatch it up. I do love her simple, no-fuss style of writing that is also beautiful and highly literary at the same time. She is an absolute master of what she does and that was never more apparent to me than while I was reading Commonwealth a few months ago.

This novel starts off with a christening party for a second child in Southern California in the late 1960s. Franny, the guest of honor, is proclaimed to be the most beautiful baby to have ever lived by nearly everyone in attendance, including the uninvited acquaintance Bert Cousins. Even more beautiful than baby Franny is her gorgeous blonde mother, Beverly. Everyone gets drunk on gin and juice from the oranges that grow in the backyard. Toward the end of the party, Bert and Beverly share a kiss in the bedroom where all the children at the party lie sleeping. This one event will end two marriages and create a new blended family that spans the country. Every summer one set of children will have to fly the length of the country in order to spend the summer with their father in Virginia. The Keating and Cousins children are a formidable group who will leave their sleeping, hungover parents asleep in a motel while they, the children, claim the gun from the car, a bottle of liquor, and the Benadryl that one of them is required to keep on them at all times. More will be revealed about that situation if you read the book.

Skipping forward, Franny, the youngest daughter, is a cocktail waitress in Chicago when she meets her author idol in her bar one night. They embark on a multi-year affair, during which he writes a novel that is HEAVILY based on the story of Franny’s family. The book is called Commonwealth and is wildly successful. Needless to say, her family is not pleased about this public divulging of all their personal history.

So this is the part where I tell you that this book is Ann Patchett’s autobiographical masterpiece. When meeting her in the store a month ago, she talked about how she had struggled with actually doing this because she feared the backlash of writing about her life and family. But she said the people she was worried about couldn’t have cared less and she couldn’t care less about the people who were. It’s funny how things work out. Now, she did not tell us exactly which parts were autobiographical, so we get to imagine that for ourselves. But, honestly, this book is a must read. We have all read thousands of family sagas, but no one can write one quite like Ann Patchett. Maybe this is because this story is so close to her heart, Commonwealth comes off as particularly emotionally-charged. You can tell when reading it that these characters mean something to her, even more so than just imagined ones.

I could gush about this book for hours, but I will only suggest that you read this book and enjoy every moment of its simple brilliance.

Signed first editions of Commonwealth are still available. Click here to purchase your copy today.

by Abbie Walker

Jacqueline Woodson won the 2014 National Book Award for her young adult novel Brown Girl Dreaming and has been a finalist for several others. Since Woodson’s new novel for adults Another Brooklyn was recently long-listed for the 2016 National Book Award, I thought I’d share with you just what this book is about and why you need to pick it up.

Another Brooklyn is one of those books that you remember in flashes—quick images that come together to form a feeling that sticks with you. In fact, that’s how Jacqueline Woodson constructs this novel about a black girl growing up in 1970s Brooklyn: through a series of memories.

Like stills from a roll of film, Woodson tells the story of August, both as the young girl who has moved to New York with her father and brother, as well as the anthropologist she later becomes, reflecting on her life. Jumping back and forth in time, August recalls the days on the streets of Brooklyn with her friends Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi. The four of them are rarely seen apart, each girl with her own dreams and desires, her own struggle of pain and loss.

The story revolves around the group growing up together, trying to navigate a world where drug addicts sleep in the hallways of their apartments and men try to grab them on the street. The four girls walk down the sidewalk with their arms linked together, not just as a show of friendship, but as a way of arming themselves against the threats around them. The girls pretend they are living in a glamorous Brooklyn, one that will make them famous and give them better futures than their parents. But they know there is another, more dangerous Brooklyn where they will need each other to survive.

“We had blades inside our kneesocks and were growing our nails long. We were learning to walk the Brooklyn streets as though we had always belonged to them—our voices loud, our laughter even louder. But Brooklyn had longer nails and sharper blades. Any strung-out soldier or ashy-kneed, hungry child could have told us this.”

Set against the backdrop of the New York blackout and news of the Biafran War, Another Brooklyn centers around the idea that a memory of an experience is just as important, if not more so, than the actual event.

I absolutely loved this novel and the almost stream-of-consciousness writing style. Woodson creates a vivid image of what it was like for a young girl of color growing up in a city that practically demanded her loss of innocence. She really makes you feel the fear and the reality of these girls’ worlds. I felt a love for each character, and Woodson has expertly weaved their stories together to tell the bigger story of what was happening during that time. This book is a quick, poetic read that I would recommend for anyone.

Woodson recently attended the Mississippi Book Festival, and Lemuria still has a few signed copies of Another Brooklyn left, so swing by and get one before they’re gone!