Book Review: Commencement

I just finished J. Courtney Sullivan's Commencement, and I enjoyed it. I bought it because having recently graduated myself, I thought the book might give me some inspiration and encouragement for my future. The book is kind of like a more adult version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants without the weird, unwashed rotating pants that magically fits four differently sized girls.

The book dives into the lives of four girls -Celie, Sally, Bree, and April- who meet at college and become best friends and shows how their lives are still entwined even as they move to different cities and uphold differing careers. The girls attended a very liberal woman's college, Smith, and a large part of the novel deals with issues of feminism. Each of the girls hold varying views about certain feminist topics, with April being an extremist and Bree, Sally, and Celie falling somewhere in the middle, taking turns leaning towards the left depending on the issue.

Although Commencement didn't really speak words of wisdom to me, I still got wrapped up in the characters' lives and was engrossed in the novel. Sullivan did an excellent job of going beyond simply introducing the four main characters. She allows her readers to really get a feel for each of the the characters' personalities so that by the end of the novel I felt like I knew how each would react in certain situations. The only part of the novel that I became annoyed about was how Bree let her life go and gave up everything she had worked so hard to achieve when she was going through a difficult time. Everyone handles grief differently, but I was surprised that her friends and family didn't tell her that it would be foolish to throw her dream job away.

Additionally, I like how Sullivan was able to weave in important issues like equality for women, homosexuality, sexual abuse, and sex trafficking without taking focus away from the characters or storyline. I would say Commencement deserves a fist pump for representing the array of women in the world who are strong, independent, driven, and ambitious and aren't afraid to make up their own rules. Although the review by New York Times is a little more critical for not exploring other issues in the novel such as Celie's difficulty with male intimacy and possible alcohol abuse, I didn't think it needed to be dwelt upon. Confidence should be placed in the readers to be able to read into those things and make their own judgments - that's simply a part of the reading process.

My book rating: 4/5 stars