Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

Commencement Reviews

• 
  Tiny Pants

  After months of Facebook ads pushing this book on me (with the headline "Vassar Grad?" no less), I succumbed as part of my project to read more fiction written for adults. Lesson learned: Don't listen to Facebook ads. Further, don't listen to blurbs from the New York Times when the author is on the editorial staff of the New York Times, and ignore blurbs from Gloria Steinem when said book contains passages of rapturous, glowing Gloria Steinem worship.
  
  
  The Group it ain't. This isn't even
  Prep. Commencement follows four Smith '02 gals (same grad year as me!) through their first four-ish years of life after college: Celia (clearly the stand-in for the author), Sally (clearly the one the author wishes she was), Bree (the stereotype of inverting stereotypes -- think Blair from The Facts of Life goes native at Smith), and April (the I-need-a-character-who-will-actually-remind-readers-of-anyone-they-knew-who-actually-went-to-Smith one). The characters aren't developed too much beyond this -- sketches of their childhoods, their college years, their great loves, and their current lives don't yield any surprises, and the author spends much more time simply telling the reader things rather than allowing details to emerge on their own.
  
  Likewise, the meta passages in this book go on and on. Toward the beginning, the characters even ponder why women authors aren't taken seriously, and how everything that is by and about women gets called chick-lit. I mean really. The main reason this isn't chick-lit is because I've read chick-lit that was a lot more enjoyable than this, where I at least sort of liked maybe one of the characters, and couldn't predict pretty much all of the major plot points.
  
  I get that the author is trying to be all serious and avoid being painted with the bright pink brush, but the subplots and commentary here just didn't do it. I know I keep pushing this book hard, but really, if you want to read a recent novel that incorporates commentary on feminism gracefully, read
  The Ten-Year Nap. If you want to read a good circle-of-college-friends novel, go all in and read
  The Group. Really want something a bit lighter, for the beach? Eff it, just read
  Freshman Dorm. But seriously, this one was just a dud.
  
  Luckily, I've got the final Pretty Little Liars book packed in my carry-on bag for my cross-country flight later today. Ahh, a fresh breath of YA.
  
• 
  Kathy

  Admittedly, I read this in just about one insomnia-fueled night, which probably influenced my opinion just a tad.
  
  On the plus side: I love four girls novels. When I was a kid, they were boarding school novels. Four very different girls arrive in a place, usually a boarding school, where they don't know anyone else. Despite the fact that they have nothing in common, they immediately become fast friends and their friendship lasts for decades, during which one will usually have a bad marriage and one will get an incurable disease. They will also have glamorous careers and lots of sex.
  
  Okay, I love them, but I'm not going to claim that they're great literature. (In fact, one of my favorites remains the great trash novel Lace, featuring the brilliant line, "which one of you bitches is my mother?") Nor am I going to claim that they're great social commentary.
  
  And that's what taints my opinion of Commencement. I zoomed right through it--300 odd pages of it--in less than 24 hours (see insomnia reference above). But there's a whiff of pretension about it. I tend to think that Sullivan thinks she's offering significant social commentary and she's not. In this way, the book falls into the same category (for me, at least) as Prep. Pleasant read, not going to stick in my brain--except for the author attitude and the media coverage implying that there's more there than is really the case.
  
  Or maybe it's the insomnia speaking.
• 
  Karina

  2.5---- I enjoyed reading this book by Sullivan. It is her debut and it is a fair one. The story follows 4 friends from Smith, a woman's college, in Massachusetts. It shows how they met and how they connected.
  
  It was partly annoying that everyone was rich, white and sheltered. The whole book also talked endlessly about the all women's college like they had giant lesbian orgies and trans men walking around the campus at all times. It can't be a women's college if that isn't thrown in there for the sake of a horny male reader that imagines that to be a women's college in his fantasies?
  
  There is Cecilia- Has a wonderful supportive family. Very needy and a sloppy drunk. Doesn't wasn't to marry so sleeps around. Always says the right thing and is the glue holding the 4 together. Parents paying for college.
  
  April- Raised by a single mother. Acts like she doesn't care but does immensely and is the encouraging one of the group. Radical feminist. The only "poor" one in the group.
  
  Sally- The "normal" one. Big neat freak. Lost her mom to cancer and is the first in group to get married. Got a $5 million settlement. Very well off.
  
  Bree- Southerner from Georgia. Good wholesome family also paying for her college. Was about to get married out of high school to a boy but fell in love with another female at the college. Family relationship got strained. Struggling with her new identity and very jealous of Sally being married and having a baby.
  
  All very different personalities and backgrounds but they are always there for each other through the worst and best of times. The chapters are each girls life and what they were going through at the same moments.
  
  I will say it was a fast read. Skimming would be okay. I enjoyed the first part but I will be honest and say that the second half was more forced and needed more help. It seemed to drag on and I felt myself get bored.
• 
  Emily

  Commencement is a novel about four white heterosexual women who attend a prestigious private college and later are able to stop going to work without worrying about money or giving up their premium cable packages. I mention this because the author seems not to have thought about it.
  
  The four women are shown as they attend Smith and become friends, and later as they graduate and decide how they want to live their lives. Bree and Sally seem to come from the pearls-and-cardigans school of women's-college grads. But whereas Sally marries young, Bree falls in love with a woman, all the while proclaiming that she is actually straight. It's unclear whether we are meant to take this at face value. Celia moves to New York and works in publishing, which is presented in a reasonably realistic light, and April takes a dangerous job with a caricature of a radical feminist. As reviewers far more prominent than me have pointed out, the characters run together a bit. I think the author only thought up three personalities and divided them among four people.
  
  The novel has a great title and has moments that are genuinely funny or insightful, which is a good foundation for any book. But the final plot twist is both predictable and implausible, and I found myself frustrated to be reading about Sally's throw pillows when real Smith grads are surely much more interesting. There is probably a good novel in the way that Bree refuses to commit to her increasingly resentful female partner because she is certain that would put the nail in the coffin of her relationship with her parents. The best way to read the novel we're given is simply to accept its limitations and enjoy it for what it is, which is not much.
• 
  Athena

  This book is about a group of Seven Sisters grads a few years out of college, like me, which is why I was curious enough to read it as soon as it came out. The first part of it looks back on how the friendships between them formed when they were in college. The second part has them grappling with their feminist politics in their relationships and life choices 4-5 years after graduating. The first part is steeped in the cult of the women's college, painting Smith as a queer feminist utopia. I always found this mindset irritating when I was in college (though I went to another Seven Sisters school), because it more or less assumed that racism, classism, transphobia, etc didn't really exist/weren't that significant on campus since everyone shared a special bond that placed them outside the dominant culture or something. And indeed, Commencement is all about the feminist politics of white middle- and upper-middle-class women, who rhapsodize about their generation of women as though their experiences were universal. This is especially true of the second part of the book, which is kind of a face-off between second- and third-wave feminism via a fairly weak subplot about child prostitution. Sullivan vilifies the more radical tendencies of the former, but emphasizes its gains -- women being able to make choices about who they sleep with or marry, and what kind of work they do. It doesn't stray very far from the feminism of Sex and the City.
  
  Sullivan's writing is mediocre -- there is a comparison to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep on the back of the book, but Sittenfeld is a much better writer. Nonetheless, there are some successful moments of satire when Sullivan takes the feelgood tone of the book over the top to mock aspects of women's college culture.
• 
  Adele

  I was expecting great things from Commencement. Maybe because I went to a historically female college, like the girls who attend Smith in the book. And most of my friends are female. But the writing is awful, the plot inconceivable (especially the ending) and it reads like polished chick lit. No thanks.
  
  All four of the rotating narrators/best friends (Celia, Bree, April and Sally) are caricatures of certain types of women. April is the radical feminist who's never known her father, Celia is bubbly and boy-crazy, Sally is beautiful and tragic with a dead mom, and Bree looks like Blake Lively, is Southern, and happens to be a lesbian. (OK, maybe Bree is a little unique. But come on, Bree? These names are awful.)
  
  The women of Commencement respond to the pressures of adult life in different ways (estrangement from homophobic parents, lots of meaningless one night stands, getting married) but even their responses are all familiar tropes.
  
  The ending swerves into spy novel and/or Sixty Minutes special report territory and never recovers. April is kidnapped by her crazy film maker mentor and made to hide out while her friends think she's dead all for an elaborate stunt. The whole situation is laughable, as is the write-off ending.
• 
  Sarah Clark

  If you are looking to get your first novel published, it must help to work for the New York Times to get all of your press and blurbs. How else could this book have gotten published?
  
  If you have attended Smith, especially during the early 2000s, this has some entertaining Smith-specific jargon and tidbits (like the trans character named Toby... how many trans Tobys were there at Smith by 2004? I lost count).
  
  If you haven't, I guess you would like this book if you were looking for a breezy summer read about really dull (and unlikely) but cozy relationships between college friends who are now in their mid-late twenties. While many reviewers dislike the one-sided character of militant feminist April, I thought her story towards the end was the only exciting part of the book (no matter how convoluted). Too bad her story wasn't pursued in detail and with more complexity.
  
  I can't believe I finished this book (in just over 24 hours). The second half was better than the first, but not enough to recommend. Oh man.
• 
  Karyn

  This is the best chick-lit book I have read in a very long time. Witty, fun, some interesting twists, and the fact that it doesn't revolve around one silly character and their strained relationship with boy X. Sullivan gives an interesting perspective on all types of relationships, something I found very refreshing. I should also say, I am from the Northampton area and really related to a lot of the book in ways others may not if you are not from that area, so I very well may be biased. In the end, I didn't want to put the book down and I really enjoyed the story.
• 
  Jamie

  This book was, in theory, right in my wheelhouse: story of four women's college graduates, one of whom was from Savannah? Count me in, even with the pale blue cover. It had the requisite women's college in-jokes (the students are called "first-years, not freshmen, because we don't see any men around here;" the mandatory "it's a women's college, not a girl's school;" the descriptions of both LUGs and girls who end up in their pajamas for class by senior year). The most infuriating part, though, came when Sullivan has the Savannahian say that she went to high school "on the main street of Savannah." Really? Where would that be, exactly, because I'm still trying to figure it out... I guess Sullivan, a Smith grad herself, researched only the places that she'd actually been to.
  
  As far as the story, though, I would say that everything was fine and dandy. Nothing tremendously interesting, or anything that hasn't been done a thousand times before. I felt like the structure of the novel, with each chapter following one of the four girls for a few pages, made the story a little frustrating - I never really felt like I understood any one character because I would only really spend 20 pages with them every 100 pages or so.
  
  The character of April is still the most difficult to swallow, especially her plotline towards the end of the book. I still don't understand how April, the diehard feminist, would become lifelong friends with the other three (her housing assignment is explained away as a glitch in the system, which she never bothers to correct because she just LOVES having friends). It seems as though Sullivan wanted to have the four major stereotypes (the Southern belle, the feminist - or should I say womynist? - the rich girl, and the scholarship girl) and didn't know how to make them all fit together so she just glossed over it all. There's a little too much emphasis on the idea of the four of them as a sisterhood or some crap like that - can't girls just ever have female friends in books, without them having to be the end-all-be-all?
• 
  Roxanne

  Before I started this book I checked out many of the reviews. I had mixed feelings. Mostly good reviews if you were a former Smithie, or knew a Smithie. Many other reviews not so good. I went ahead and began my reading.
  
  WOW. My years at college were nothing like this. Thank goodness. The storyline is a little outlandish and unbelievable to me. The second half really seemed to drag on and on. I found myself skimming pages more than reading them, just to move things along.
  
  I had a hard time accepting the closeness of the 4 women who had such vast differences between them. I was really disappointed on how these "good friends" reacted to Sally's engagement. Unsupportive and perhaps jealous of their very good friend.
  
  I felt like Sullivan introduced too many insignificant characters. I was always asking myself, is this a character I have to remember or not? I also felt overwhelmed by the political feminism and constant lesbian overtones. Enough already!
  
  I just didn't care for this book. When I was done, I had no lingering thoughts about anything from the book. Zero.
  
  On the positive side, I really liked Sullivan's book Maine. A difference like day and night to me.
  
• 
  Carol

  Amateurishly written, clunky, boring, and riddled with bad dialogue and cardboard characters. And I went to a school not unlike Smith in some ways, so you'd think I'd be interested. I soldiered on for 49 pages and gave up. (I don't even care if there's going to be a torrid lesbian love affair, which I rather assume there will be.)
  
  I'm editing to add that I see a lot of people comparing this (favorably) to Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," which I have also read. "Prep" is by far the superior book, in my opinion. Really, there's no comparison.
• 
  Kate

  At first I loved this book and thought it was my generation's great feminist novel. The story is about four friends who meet at Smith, and trials and tribulations of their friendships. Sullivan does a great job capturing life at a women's college turn of the millenia-- the running around, the chasing of boys, the trying on of different ideologies. Also it was one of the first books I've read in a while that honestly draws in feminist theory, as the women in the story discuss the choices they have in life, and how that creates both wonderful opportunities but also regret and disappointment when they can't have it all.
  
  The second part of the novel deals more with life after college and introduces a plot line about one of the women (April) and her project delving into the lives of prostitutes on the streets of Atlanta. I don't think this was the best of example for the book to use about radical feminism. In the story, April's boss gains notoriety for filming a wife being beaten by her husband and then eggs him on to finally kill her. I don't think a character like this would be "shunned" by the mainstream feminist community-- I think she would be locked up. What this woman does next with April-- a character that's never fully developed, perhaps because she is the least like all of the others, from a poor and non-WASPy home-- is abusive. It upset me that Sullivan wove in all of these other struggles between family and life partner, career and motherhood, and identity in general with a story that seems so off base that it no longer rang true. It's almost as if she tricked me into thinking I was reading a light-hearted novel about women's friendships and turned it into an expose about the plight of sex workers in America.
• 
  Maureen

  I wanted to like this book far more than I ultimately did. The first 1/3 of the novel reminded me so strongly of the relationships that I developed with my closest friends from college - the initial, bumbling attempts to get through homesickness together during freshman year, the arguments and disagreements as we grew and changed, together and individually, by senior year and everything in between. And while my college experience was, in many ways, markedly different from the all-woman's-college vibe of Smith that the author details, I felt comforted as the narrative followed the four women into their post-college lives, their struggles to stay in touch despite busy schedules and many miles, a situation I've found myself increasingly disheartened by in my own life. Eventually the book became more of a new-millenium feminist manifesto. Not that I have anything against feminist manifestos, but it wasn't where I thought the book was going, and to me, those ideological issues seemed to simultaneously get in the way of the friendship among the four women AND feel randomly inserted and mostly meaningless.
  
  Very much enjoyed the story of the friendships between the women, but could have done without the shoe-horned feminist ideology.
• 
  Cande

  Trigger warnings: lesbophobia, fat-shaming, sexual assault, abuse, biphobia.
  
  I'm so disgusted. The lesbophobia and biphobia of this book is so terrible. The characters literally say that it is a "lesbian phase". Not only they erase bisexuality, but they also are implying that lesbians are not real. I mean, one of the characters say that "being a lesbian is fun".
  
  
  
  And then we have sexual assault as a plot twist. And it kind of ends as a secret, because the character doesn't believe it was sexual assault, so we're a supposed to believe that too? I don't know.
  
  The book talks about feminism but it felt like it was making fun of. April, a radical feminist, is never taken seriously. Her friends don't care about patriarchy and rape culture. I mean, they even have the most simple and annoying anti feminist comments.
  
• 
  Sandra

  Un peu long par moment
• 
  Joanne-in-Canada

  Nearly stopped at “Bree sobbed into her hands, the hot tears puddling in her palms”, then again at the second reference to a cheesy montage (followed by a description of said montage) but slogged through to the end. Would have been a good airplane book.
• 
  Gail

  Here's the thing: I knew after reading the last page of Commencement that I was going to keep reading Sullivan's work. (Matter of fact, I'm excited to pick up The Engagements here soon.)
  
  I say that first and foremost because what I loved best about this book is her talent. This story? At times? Ehhhh not so much.
  
  I mean, I loved the characters—Bree, Sally, April, and Celia. I loved that they were experiencing college together, sharing in 20-something memories that in many ways felt both familiar and real. And I also loved that they were four individuals who were totally flawed (because women, especially, are multi-faceted creatures, right?).
  
  What I didn't love? All the parts that read like Sullivan wrote her senior thesis at Smith College (where the book is set) ABOUT Smith College, then cut up the pages into strips she felt she had to insert into this book.
  
  In my view, its 400-plus pages would have greatly benefited from some cutting on the editorial side of things(at least 20 pages worth), most of it coming from the points about Smith that Sullivan insisted on making multiple times. Like how Smith is the Lesbian College Capital of the world. (Which, while likely true...at least according to the Google searching I felt compelled to do post-read, it still felt like this point in particular got crammed down our throats time and time again.)
  
  Overall, Sullivan a great author. This was her first novel (and it's at least 6-7 yrs old now, with two out since), so I'll be curious to see how her skills have evolved in subsequent reads. If her characters in those books are half as well-drawn as these four best friends, I'm sure to fall hard for them.
• 
  Liz

  While the brief synopsis on the inside cover of this book makes it sound like another fun chick-lit read, I found it to be anything but. The 4 main characters come from varied backgrounds to attend an all women's college and become best friends. Four years later they are still best friends, despite their differences lifestyles and locations, and they meet up for the wedding of one of the girls. As they grow and change, so does their friendship.
  
  I thought the author portrayed those first post-grad years well and the characters had a lot of depth (well, except Sally, who I never quite got...) but I didn't really like any of them and I never found myself rooting for them. The book also feels preachy at times when the focus shifts to gay rights, and later child prostitution. While these are important topics, they seemed to overwhelm the story and make the book much heavier than I anticipated.
  
  Overall, the author touches on important themes for young women, like careers, family ties, abuse, friendship and the mother-daughter relationship, but the story didn't completely win me over.
• 
  Lauren

  I loved the first half of this book and think every Seven Sisters grad will get a kick out of Commencement. I think the NYTBR raises a lot of points that I also had about the book and I'll leave it at that. I thought some of the various twists in the second half of the book were frustrating, but I see how the author is demonstrating the challenge of living with (perhaps too many) choices.
  
  I think it's worth mentioning that the comparisons to Prep do this book a gross disservice. It's a far better and more enjoyable book and I hope it gives the Seven Sisters college some positive exposure.
  
  ***In retrospect, I forgot to say how evocative this book is when comes to the all-consuming nature of friendships developed in college, but particularly in women's colleges. She cuts to the quick when it comes to certain truths regarding female friendship. I also think Sullivan makes some painfully insightful observations about single life in New York City. I question the directions she took in the second half of the book, but I'd like to discuss it with someone else.
• 
  Lisa

  Five stars! I loved this smart novel about four women living together at Smith College in Massachusetts. The story follows their friendship after graduation and the ending is open to interpretation (which I really enjoyed!)
• 
  Heather Orta

  This was bad. Made me nostalgic for W but this author should see a therapist. Truly
• 
  Naia

  Had a lot of potential, but I feel like the second half fell flat
• 
  Julie

  If you're like me, and you enjoy reading reviews of a book BEFORE you decide to purchase it, you have undoubtedly already read many other reviews for Commencement. Therefore, you have probably noticed that those reviews are pretty mixed (Although, admittedly, the positive ones seem to slightly outnumber the negative). I'm here to tell you that almost everything you have read about this book is correct, both the good and the bad. But despite its drawbacks, I would highly recommend Commencement, as a quick and easy read, as well as a surprisingly intelligent and insightful novel.
  
  Unlike the girls in this novel, I didn't go to an All-Girl College. Rather, I attended a very large coed university. And yet, despite that, I found myself relating very much to the college experiences described in Commencement. I think, generally, the college experience is a universal one, and Sullivan does a great job recreating it here.
  
  The author is equally adept at describing what it's like to be an independent female, struggling to make a life for herself, during her twenties. (I'm going through them now, so I would know! :)) During those first few years after college, life always seems to be changing in completely unexpected ways. And things never seem to turn out like you planned. Bree, April, Sally and Celia are perfect examples of this; as, I suspect, are many of us readers, myself included.
  
  I found something relatable in each of the four main characters in this novel. They all either reminded me of myself, or friends of mine that I met during college. Celia, the perpetually single aspiring writer of the group, was probably the most similar to me. But I also related to Bree's ambition, April's independence, and Sally's . . . well, I guess I didn't have all that much in common with Sally, but I liked her nonethless.
  
  Sure, the characters start out as the typical stereotypical chick lit characters: the Southern Belle, the Irish Catholic "good girl gone bad," the poor little rich girl, and the hippie hardcore feminist. However, as the story progresses, Sullivan turns these stereotypes on their heads, and really gives you a sense of how complex these girls truly are.
  
  Sullivan also has a lot to say about feminism, and what it means to be a "feminist" in modern day society. A lot of what she says is very insightful. And her characters allow us readers to look at the topic from four very different perspectives. My only gripe here, was that I wish these "arguments" were blended more seamlessly and subtly into the narrative. Sometimes I felt like I was being preached to, instead of being told a story. And during a few passages, I felt as though I were reading an essay for Sociology class, as opposed to a novel.
  
  I also wish some of the male characters presented here were a bit more fleshed out and less two-dimensional. Most of the men with which these girls interact, receive only about a one or two line mention. And the two "main" males of the story, seem only to be drawn in broad brushstrokes and simplistic characterizations. One is "good" and one is "bad." Talk about reverse sexism! To me, a true portrait of modern day feminism, requires at least some discussion of how a woman lives in a world among men. This was one piece of the puzzle that Sullivan seemed to be missing.
  
  Also, like many others who read this book, the final "plot twist" involving one of the main characters, irked me greatly. It seemed extremely far fetched and manipulative -- almost as if it was written purely to evoke unnecessary drama amongst the girls, and provide a soapbox for yet another sociological argument.
  
  Yet, despite these weak points, I really enjoyed Commencement. It's fun, thoughtful, smart, and will undoutedly cause you to remember your best YEARS and best FRIENDS. And who wouldn't want to read a book that evokes such fond memories?
  
  
• 
  Heidi

  This book was recommended by several Smith classmates from the late '90s, but I have to say I'm deeply underwhelmed. Yes, it was fun for nostalgia's sake to read about familiar places (drinking at Packard's, skinny dipping in Paradise Pond, etc), and to recall those first few disorienting days after arrival as a first year (keeping straight all the acronyms, HONS and SAAs and JMG and so on). But beyond that pleasant jolt of recognition of the general, I was put off by how much I did not recognize the specific: the four main protagonists of this book did not ring true as real Smithies. Instead, oddly and disturbingly, they struck me as stereotypes imagined by someone who knew Smith well but didn't really enjoy or connect with the Smith experience--reminding me of the skewed, jaded reminiscences of a few friends I have who attended Smith briefly but then transferred to other schools because they were dissatisfied or even embittered by Smith. The descriptions of characters other than the four main protagonists are offensive and insulting (the House President is nicknamed "Jenna the Monster Truck", and everyone is described either as fat slobs who can't be bothered to groom themselves or emaciated sticks who talk about food all the time and like to puke in the shower).
  
  I simply did not like any of these characters: they were elitist, shallow, alcohol-swilling narcissists for whom the entire Smith experience seemed to boil down to the novelty of making out with roommates and attending parties. (I remember a few elitist, alcohol-swilling classmates, and we were ALL narcissistic at that stage in life, but I don't remember any of my Smith colleagues being this shallow and entirely consumed by the ridiculous.) Although the author tells us that each of the four characters graduated magna cum laude, they all seemed to have completely escaped the incredible broadening of intellectual horizons that was the hallmark of my Smith experience. The only real discussion of classes or coursework involved a subplot where one of the characters was sleeping with a married English professor.
  
  This book hits a lot of hot-button issues, but even where the characters explore the various facets of the topic through their divergent viewpoints, it is as if Sullivan is giving a debate team overview of pros and cons, rather than making the reader (at least this reader) believe that her characters truly understand the issues or have any unique light to shed.
  
• 
  Jess

  I'm not sure I would have liked this book as much as I did if I hadn't had a very similar college experience. I went to that other women's college up the road from Smith and I graduated the year before the characters in this book would have, so the quad, Mountain Day, Amherst keg parties, and the Holyoke Mall are familiar settings. Sullivan gets the college scenes perfectly right - she has a keen eye for detail and captures grief and tension extraordinarily well. It's when the girls get out of college that the story falls apart a little.
  
  In her book, Sullivan makes the old point about women authors not being taken for literary, but her four female characters - each fitting a convenient little one-dimensional pigeonhole (although there were two I could never tell apart) - don't really transcend chick lit. For strong female characters, they sure seem to spend a lot of time discussing their love lives and material possessions. Well, three of them do, anyway. The fourth becomes enmired in ideals, which is painted as the biggest mistake a young Smithie could make. April's cause is the sort of straw-man feminism that grated on me when I read "The World According to Garp." I feel like there might be a great story about four twenty-six-year-old college buddies trying to find their way in the world and navigate their complicated relationships with one another, but they'd need a better story arc, and they'd need to spend less time talking about their boyfriends/girlfriends.
  
  Sullivan is a very talented writer, but I don't think she's far enough removed from the Smith experience (and the recent-grad experience) to write about it with a layer of maturity and objectivity. I enjoyed the book but I wanted it to be deeper and more nuanced - like a rawer, more intellectual "Prep," not a meandering chick-lit tale with vaguely not-feminist undertones. We women's college alumnae need a book like that.
• 
  Krissy

  I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best books I've read in the past three years. Commencement follows four women from their beginnings at Smith College through their formative years in their mid-twenties. Each of the four main characters is likable but not without their flaws, which helps readers to be able to relate to them. I was immediately drawn in because of the premise because I had a similar experience in college of finding my own group of soul sisters that helped to support me and who influenced my life after college much like this group of friends does. The story lines are engaging and realistic while the character growth for each of the four feels genuine and authentic. It's easy to get lost in their college years and then relate even more after they graduate. This is one of the reasons I love the book.
  
  The other reason I was impressed was because of the feminism element. Sullivan easily weaves in thought-provoking views and questions as each of the characters navigates a women's college and their own personal identities. While I can see why some people might find some of it to be overkill or preachy, I never felt that way and instead was cheering for the narratives and questions that were raised by the characters and incidents in the book. I've never seen that done before--at least not in a way that felt organic and real. This book is not only a fantastic read but it could be a great gateway to feminism for anyone wondering about it stands for or how identity development occurs if you do or do not label yourself with the f-word. As someone who worked at a women's college and has done a fair amount of exploring herself with feminism, I felt that the book did a great job of showing the topic. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants a good read, likes strong female characters or wants to do a bit of feminist exploring. This book is great for all three things.
• 
  Maya

  Well. Perhaps it's because I'm not a Smithie that I fail to find any charm in this book; all the Smithies who've reviewed it seem to luuuuve it. All fine and good.
  
  I found little of value here: More questions are raised than are resolved, which would be one thing if it were done with more insight. Isn't it charming that all four of these women are best friends? Isn't that just super? One character has a date rape experience early on in college that leads to issues with promiscuity and possibly alcoholism; that's just fine, though, as long as you can talk to your mom about it, apparently.
  
  Another character goes to work for a legendary and controversial feminist filmmaker; the way her boss comes to control her is the point upon which the plot pivots near the end of the book (in an obvious and ham-handed twist, might I add), and yet there's no substantive exploration of what might be some pretty interesting moral questions.
  Such as: when does the greater good outweigh that of individual rights?
  
  Nowhere in this book do I feel Sullivan getting beneath the most surface characteristics of her group of protagonists. The end of the book was so poorly done it just flat-out made me angry.
• 
  Sharon

  I picked up this book based on a fantastic review I read in the local newspaper, and I must say I ended up disappointed. As I started the book, I was satifised just being introduced to the characters, but I didn't like them. The girls were all immature in college and beyond (in their “freshman year of life”). And although this was about friendships formed in college, there was very, very little about academics. Somehow, they all managed to stay up all night talking on a continuous basis, and yet, the worst academic problem was the mention of getting an A- on one final exam. Maybe Smith just hands out A’s like candy but probably not. And apparently everyone at Smith is a lesbian or at least has a lesbian relationship while at college. The second half of the book, with the disappearance of April bordered on ridiculous. Would I recommend this book? No, I think it was over-rated as a piece of literature and is not nearly as deep as the author perhaps intended it to be – it is basically a ho-hum beach read.