DEC - Commencement

December review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, 2009. [New Adult category]

Commencement by J Courtney Sullivan is just that: a commencement. A beginning that, like life, once begun cannot be paused or made to wait for you. It picks you up and wraps you into the lives of four young women during their days at Smith College, and the intricacies of each story keep the pages turning. Sally, Celia, Bree, and April are very different in their first days at Smith, but we follow as they move toward each other, learning about themselves and about life as a woman along the way. Sullivan deals with dark topics such as rape, child prostitution and nascent feminism as the girls make their way through their years in Smith's bubble and then ripple out into their own worlds. For all its vague character development and surface-scratching of aforementioned issues, I couldn't stop reading. It was one of two possible titles for my "new adult" category, the one I started reading second, but the first very soon fell by the wayside as I stayed up later and later in my hotel room over Thanksgiving to read Commencement, while College Girl languished with a bookmark barely past the first chapter and the meeting of the strangely friendly boy who will obviously bring eponymous heroine out of her young adult shell. (Boring.) I enjoyed my final decision much more.

As a word nerd, the very first thing I loved about this book was the play on the title; the word "commencement" as a reference to the college graduation ceremony, but also to the start of a new life, a new chapter. This novel perfectly straddled that double meaning, especially through the use of memories dislocated in time. We are never quite sure if what we are experiencing is in the present until the end of the book, when the old memories get fewer and farther between. Sullivan pulled off a book about four girls' realigning relationships that also comments on the absurdity of some of life's vicissitudes, especially those facing young women. Sure her characters are white women from varying degrees of the upper-middle class, and there are times when Sullivan presents their feminism as if it is the only brand that exists, but I think that she did a good job for what this book was trying to be. And that's the thing about feminist endeavors lately: it seems to me that we as a culture have become so hypercritical and obsessed with a political correctness that ends in sanitization of anything real that whenever anyone tries to make a dent, however small, in such a complex topic, if they don't pull it off perfectly and without anything that could possibly be construed as offensive to someone else, we attack them. When really we should be applauding their attempt to do something about anything, to keep the ball rolling even if it gets picked up and hurled back in their face (read: Lily Allen and her "Hard Out Here" video).

In terms of the category of the month, I originally wasn't positive this book would fit. I mean, it fit by my understanding of the definition (New Adult is a category with protagonists age 18-25 learning about their world and how to transition in it), but this particular book wasn't on any "delineated "New Adult" list per se, so I took a few liberties. When I was searching, most of the "new adult" category seemed to be sexed-up half-naked 19 year olds on the covers going to college and (possibly) being magical and just generally angsting about things for sequels on sequels on sequels. (Aside--Hell yeah I'm judging books by their covers, and I'm super glad I did so. Fight about it.) As a young twentysomething moving through the commencement of my own strange life, I felt that this second wave of "New Adult" (the college/post-college subjects) was more fitted to my sensibilities. I mentioned Commencement wasn't on any Goodreads lists or the New Adult fiction wikipedia page et cetera, I used my literary discretion to find a book that I thought fit the category but would also give me something in return, a practice I have tried to use all year. There is talk amongst The Critics, that amorphous blob of humanity that makes up most of my knowledge about new books, that this category is purely a fad, a marketing technique to differentiate Skyler Gray from Percy Jackson, and while this is a valid point, I think this category will last. I think people will always be looking to find books that mirror their own life, and having more and more specific subcategories (teen paranormal romance, anyone?) will help people on their quest. I enjoyed Commencement even though I didn't go to a womens college or go undercover to bring awareness to child prostitution rings or have an affair with my professor, and it was because it was about girls in the same mindset as me, trying to figure out what a big ticket education and all the possibility in the world is going to get me.