Commonwealth

“Ours—Strangers” is a psychological novel by one of America’s most popular contemporary writers. One Sunday evening, a prosecutor’s assistant, Albert Kazins, leaves his wife and children at home, takes a bottle of gin, and goes to Francis Kitting’s party—a colleague he hardly knows, to an event that no one invited him to. Albert never intended to kiss Beverly, the host’s wife—but it happened on its own. As a result, this one event destroys two marriages and permanently changes the lives of four adults and six children. In one of her best novels, master of deep psychological prose Ann Patchett tells how their fates unfolded over the following fifty years.