Customer Reviews

Commencement (Vintage Contemporaries)

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

I am just about 20 years older than the women in this book, and I went to Mount Holyoke, not Smith, but I recognized the women in this book.

The book is imperfect. It seems to make the case that the life-changing aspects of an education at a place like Smith are all in the personal relationships and extra-curricular activities, and that's just not true. Academics are mentioned only in connection with a plot point that has nothing to do with education. It's not my experience (nor my observation, of my Mount Holyoke and Smith alum friends) that you can isolate any part of the experience like that. It's an education as well as a community.

Once the women graduate, again, the focus is solely on their emotional lives, except for April, and again, this is solely because it's needed for a plot point to work. On the whole, the separation of emotional life from the any grounding context weakens the book. (Example: At one point, Bree takes a long leave of absence from her job -- that she supposedly loves -- as an associate at a West Coast law firm, a job that was hard to come by, even after graduating magna from Smith and at the top of her Stanford Law class. Her response? "Oh well, I'll probably be fired.")

Now for what works about the book. The descriptions of the early days settling into Smith rang very true. The women seem realistic to me, even with their weaknesses. The friendships are complex and complicated, and even difficult, but believable.

Finally, and most important, the book is about choices. Good choices, bad choices, brave choices, careless choices, scared choices, and even the choices we make when we pretend not to choose. It's about accepting the consequences of those choices. It's about revising our understanding of the past in light of what we learn as we live our lives. And it's about the power of friendship and love in the face of the chaos we create with all our choices.

The writing is fluent, the main characters are likable and seem realistic, given what we know of where each came from. The book took me viscerally back to my undergraduate experience and to those years just after graduation. There's enough to like here that on the whole, I'd call this is very good book.

"Commencement" is a beach book for 2009 for the post college crowd. I am probably not in the demographic that this book would appeal to but I applaud the author, J. Courtney Sullivan on her debut novel just the same.

The story seems benign at the onset as 4 women meet and become bonded in their first year at Smith College. But this tale takes serious twist and turns in the lives of it's 4 female characters weaving back and forth between their college years of discovering who they are and their post college years as the women they have become.

There are heavy topics used as platforms or springboards for this story and sometimes it does approach preachy. Prostitution, child abuse, lesbian relationships, date rape, just to name a few.

The author J. Courtney Sullivan, who is a graduate from Smith goes into detail about the unusual tendencies and rituals of attending an all women's college and I found this amusing and sometimes a little freaky not having attended an all female college myself. I have heard the rumors but this was way more than I needed to know--if it's really true!

Overall, it was an easy read with a small mystery towards the end. Was it a page turner? No. At the heart, it's a book about the bonds of female friendships in a fast paced world which barely leaves you time to take out the garbage, much less keep up with your most cherished relationships.

Since I'm always a sucker for novels about academic life, I devoured Commencement as soon as it arrived in the mail. This novel chronicles the complex lives and relationships of four young women (the Southern Bree, the radical April, the complicated Sally, and the dynamic Celia) who meet as freshmen at Smith. The chapters move seamlessly, and each character is beautifully intertwined within each chapter. This novel is more complex than most novels about women's friendships, and this has more "bite" than a typical summer read. I agree with some of the other reviews in that the novel has somewhat of an "identity" crisis, but I don't think that this is necessarily a negative quality. I enjoyed the look into the emotional lives of the characters, the clever dialogue, and the very realistic feel of the plot devices. Refreshingly, these characters do more than shop for designer clothes and sip on cosmos. This is a thinking girl's summer read.

The characters' post-collegiate lives serve as relevant commentary on the many choices that today's young women have. The plot twists and turns, and most of these twists are resolved at the end of the novel, which is satisfying. Don't let the social commentary fool you, though- This is still an enjoyable book. I think that readers who enjoy Curtis Sittenfeld or Kate Christensen will enjoy this one, as well.

I was hesitant to read this novel, but I couldn't help reading a book written not just about my alma mater, but about four fictional women who graduated in my class. This book turned out to be a romp through the lives of four shallow, entitled, judgmental, drunken caricatures of people about whom I could not bring myself to care. It portrays many of the things I found precious about my Smith experience as ridiculous and makes Smithies look like self-centered, catty children who paid upwards of $30k/year (back then) just to socialize and go to Amherst College parties to pick up boys. That was certainly not what my Smith experience looked like. Yes, the women I met there changed my life and were an integral part of my Smith experience, but Sullivan seems to completely overlook the impact the classes, lectures, and other academic experiences have on college students' growth.

One of the most valuable things I learned from Smith College was to look at things from a broader perspective, to step outside myself and to consider the overarching social and political issues that inform situations before deciding on my own opinions of things. The women in this book clearly never learned that lesson. In fact, it's hard for me to believe Sullivan attended the same Smith College I did.

At the end of the book, Sullivan tries to turn it into an Issue Novel, but fails miserably. This might work better if she'd set up more substantial characters, or if this section of the book wasn't so out of place with the rest of the storylines. Sullivan attempts to use the Issue to generate suspense, but the plot is so transparent that it's clear what's coming from a mile away.

In short, Commencement's characters are flat and ridiculous and obsessed with trivial concerns, unable to look outside of themselves. They appear to never think about the implications of their decisions, either on others or on their own futures.

My recommendation? Spare yourself and pass this one by.

Entertaining, but not a masterpiece by any stretch. A must-read for Smithies past and present, but I'm not sure whether this rises much above chick-lit (albeit of the smarter variety) for everyone else. So many of the descriptions of college life and the intense friendship bonds among those attending 7 sisters colleges really resonated with me, but the post-college character development was a bit thin. The suspense/intrigue/mystery sub-plot (won't give it away) felt contrived. This book can't decide whether it wants to be a frothy beach read or an attempt at social commentary, thereby falling a bit short on both. And yes, I will confirm that we Smithies REALLY ARE that obsessed with our friends and the college itself for the rest of our lives, although some elements of the Smith experience were grossly stereotyped here.

As far as first novels go, this is good but nothing like the genius of something like Zadie Smith's "White Teeth." That said, I don't see how a previous reviewer thinks this isn't a cut above typical chic-lit fare like Sophie Kinsella or Melissa Banks ("Confessions Of A Shopaholic" and "A Girl's Guide To Hunting And Fishing"? Seriously???????) And in the college-novel category, this is not as good as "Prep" but much better than Tom Wolfe's ridiculous "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (ugh)

I started reading this book with the expectation that it would be an easy, leisure beach book, not some award-winning writing. It started off OK, although I didn't get why there was so many blatant stereotypes. The characters seemed to have some potential, but then it just takes a nosedive. None of the characters are particularly developed -- there are shades of serious storylines for each of them, but they all go nowhere (an affair with a professor, a college rape, a lesbian love affair, etc.). The last part of the book is completely out of left field and suddenly seems to want to make A Point, and fails miserably.

It would have been better if each character had their own storyline and developed in their own way, instead of suddenly turning the focus to one character's disappearance and everyone else's reaction to it. It felt forced. Ultimately a huge disappointment -- thankfully it was a fast read so I didn't waste too much of my time.

As a graduate of a women's college and lover of commercial and literary women's fiction, I wanted to like this book but it just isn't any good. As many others have pointed out, none of the characters have their own character or voice and it feels like the author was torn between writing something commercial and writing a literary novel. As it stands, it is neither; it is just a muddled, dull novel about four boring characters that I couldn't for the life of me care about. I'm disappointed in the author, but more than anything I am disappointed in the New York Times, a supposed beacon of subjective reporting, for blatantly favoring a novel written by one of their own.

After the positive review in The New York Times, and because I attended Smith College for a few semesters back in the 1950s, I was completely psyched up to read this book. What a disappointment I found it to be!

The girls (and I use the word advisedly, as in all the 324 pages these characters never seemed to grow up) are exaggerated stereotypes of Smith girls. Did these students ever go to class? I can't remember any discussion of classes, except the one taught by the professor with whom Sally had the affair (which, by the way, was an unsurprising turn of events that did not advance the story in any way). And did they ever study? The plot (was there a plot?) was plodding and boring, the events predictable and often implausible. The Lesbian quotient, while present, was never such a central aspect of Smith life when I was there.

Reviewers often say that Commencement is better than chick lit. Not to me. I found it silly, trashy, shallow, and trite.

I went to Smith, so it was vaguely amusing to be able to relate to all the references in the book. But I found the character development (which should have been the whole point) very amateur and unsatisfying (Celia and Sally remain confused in my mind), and the dialogue simple-minded and silly. Far from hilarious, as some have claimed. We sort of plod from one event to the next. Many lines were just plain trite--this author doesn't have much of a voice. She should, perhaps, stick with reporting. The fact that she works at the Times should not in any way have influenced their choice of books for summer reading, but reality supposes otherwise. A sad disappointment.

Since others have provided synopses of Commencement's characters and plot, I would simply add that Ms. Sullivan has written a strong debut novel that does an excellent job of:

1. describing the insular, precious character of a women's liberal arts college with its unique traditions and eccentricities

2. conveying the bonding, as lifelong friends, of very different individuals within the Smith College environment

3. providing descriptions, both during the characters time at Smith and during their "college years of real life", that are frequently very funny

On the "room for improvement" side of the ledger are:

1. The sexual exploitation plot line was disconnected to the rest of the book

2. The character of April was neither particularly well-drawn nor likeable--it was not apparent why the other three women would be her lifelong friends

While not the new best book I've read this summer, I'd recommend Commencement and look forward to more work from Ms. Sullivan.