Friends Forever

I have a number of friends, all of whom are dear to me, but there are three in particular that I’ve known longer than the others and that I would consider my best friends. The four of us went to high school together – all-girls Catholic high school, no less. We survived the plaid skirts, the nuns and the no-boys. Even more impressively, we managed to stay friends throughout the craziness that accompanied the following years: college, first jobs, boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, illness, disagreements, marriages and honest-to-god adulthood.

There’s something magical about the bond between female friends, one that has enticed writers for years. Everyone from Judy Blume (As Long as We’re Together, Summer Sisters) and Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) to Ann Brashares (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) and Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) have explored the unexplained depths found in the friendships between women.

And so it is with J. Courtney Sullivan and her debut novel, Commencement. Sullivan’s story revolves around four very different friends: April, Bree, Celia and Sally. They meet as first-year students at Smith College, a long-standing bastion of women-only colleges. Initially brought together by the random assignment of rooms, these women quickly become each other’s lifeline during an emotional and ever-changing time in their lives. When they gather for Sally’s wedding four years after graduation, things shift and change in a way that affects all of them in ways they don’t yet know.

Commencement has received mostly positive reviews, which intrigued me enough to read the book. Sullivan’s book is not perfect – in some ways, it is very obviously a first novel and it seems to be striving for some height that it just doesn’t reach. That said, however, I loved Sullivan’s characters and the way she drew me into the story.

April, Bree, Celia and Sally were so vivid and real – I could easily imagine them as people I’ve met and known. They are each given the chance to narrate their own histories, to tell their stories and reflect on the others. The plot does seem a bit slow at times, but when you stop rushing towards story and take the time to savor the people who are taking this journey, you are, as a reader, rewarded.

It was easy to relate to these women, perhaps because I’m not much older than they are. I saw a bit of myself in each of them and oftentimes, I found myself reflecting on my own post-collegiate years. As I read about their mistakes and triumphs, I recalled my own; when I looked back to see the winding and twisted path their lives had taken over the course of the novel, I saw my own proverbial yellow brick road and I saw myself, stumbling around until I finally got to where I thought I was supposed to be.

J. Courtney Sullivan’s Commencement is a well-written and finely detailed exploration into the strange, complicated and fulfilling world of four friends, brought together by chance, but united by choice.

[Photo Credit: Random House Library]