Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

The train rolled past Thirty-fourth Street, where tourist families with fanny packs and matching smiles piled into the car. Their blond children held on to the poles, swaying this way and that, thrilled by every jolt and bump of the train. Celia thought for a moment how strange it felt to simply live—to work, and go to the gym, and buy groceries, and wait for trains—in a place where so many people were visiting and in awe of their surroundings.

-Commencement

Commencement, as its name suggests, is a novel about beginnings. One beginning is the first day at Smith College for four young women: headstrong Celia, radical April, sheltered Bree, and seemingly flawless Sally. They form the kind of friendships it seems you can only form when you're young, when you can devote all your spare time to getting to know people. They go to wild parties and get their hearts broken and sing into their hairbrushes. They become each other's family.

Much of the action of Commencement takes place four years after their graduation. Graduation, of course, is an end and beginning unto itself, but that entire post-college period is marked by the possibility of many beginnings. (I should know, I'm still in the thick of it.) It's a time of finding your footing in the world, and the women of Commencement choose different paths. Celia lives in Brooklyn and dreams of being a writer. April is ready to embark on a dangerous endeavor to bring awareness to women in need. Bree is wrestling with the end of a long-term relationship. And Sally's getting married, which provides the perfect excuse to get the four of them back together—although they soon discover that picking up where they left off isn't as easy as they would like.

I didn't particularly identify with any one character in Commencement, but I think J. Courtney Sullivan created four realistic young women. It seems clear that Sullivan, a Smith alumna herself, has drawn on her own experience in writing. It's certainly interesting to take a peek behind the curtain of a women's college, a place which seems subject to so much speculation and stereotyping. Although the college experience of the women of Commencement was fairly dissimilar from my own, I couldn't help but feel a touch nostalgic.

I also keenly understood the transitional period that the women were in, four years after graduation. Commencement really came at a great time for me, since I am navigating my own transition right now, one that is far more complicated than anticipated. It certainly helped me to understand what the characters were going through, even though their individual circumstances were different from my own. I also appreciated that, although Commencement dealt with very serious issues, Sullivan wrote with a deftly light touch that prevented the book from getting too dense or preachy. It would be a fantastic beach or traveling read.

Up next: I have many choices at my disposal right now, but I think I'm going to go with A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick.