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Commitment
A masterful and engrossing novel about a single mother's collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.
When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn't, she's worked hard to secure their future in caste drive 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother's dreams for them alive.
At Berkeley, Walter discovers a passion for architecture just as he realizes his life as a student may need to end for lack of funds. Back home in LA, his sister, Lina, who works in an ice-cream parlor while her wealthy classmates are preparing for Ivy league schools, wages a high stakes gamble to go there with them. And Donny, the little brother everybody loves, begins to hide in plain sight, coding, gaming and drifting towards a life on the beach, where he falls into an escalating relationship with drugs.
Moving from Berkeley to Los Angeles and New York and back again, this is a story about one family trying to navigate the crisis of their lives, a crisis many know first-hand in their own families or in those of their neighbors. A resonant novel about family and duty and the attendant struggles that come when a parent falls ill, Commitment honors the spirit of fragile, imperfect mothers and the under-chronicled significance of friends, in determining the lives of our children left on their own. With Commitment, Mona Simpson, one of the foremost chroniclers of the American family in our time, has written her most important and unforgettable novel.
When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn't, she's worked hard to secure their future in caste drive 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother's dreams for them alive.
At Berkeley, Walter discovers a passion for architecture just as he realizes his life as a student may need to end for lack of funds. Back home in LA, his sister, Lina, who works in an ice-cream parlor while her wealthy classmates are preparing for Ivy league schools, wages a high stakes gamble to go there with them. And Donny, the little brother everybody loves, begins to hide in plain sight, coding, gaming and drifting towards a life on the beach, where he falls into an escalating relationship with drugs.
Moving from Berkeley to Los Angeles and New York and back again, this is a story about one family trying to navigate the crisis of their lives, a crisis many know first-hand in their own families or in those of their neighbors. A resonant novel about family and duty and the attendant struggles that come when a parent falls ill, Commitment honors the spirit of fragile, imperfect mothers and the under-chronicled significance of friends, in determining the lives of our children left on their own. With Commitment, Mona Simpson, one of the foremost chroniclers of the American family in our time, has written her most important and unforgettable novel.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2023
239 people are currently reading
7987 people want to read
About the author
Mona Simpson
35 books410 followersMona Simpson was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin, then moved to Los Angeles as a young teenager. Her father was a recent immigrant from Syria and her mother was the daughter of a mink farmer and the first person in her family to attend college. Simpson went to Berkeley, where she studied poetry. She worked as a journalist before moving to New York to attend Columbia’s MFA program. During graduate school, she published her first short stories in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and Mademoiselle. She stayed in New York and worked as an editor at The Paris Review for five years while finishing her first novel, Anywhere But Here. After that, she wrote The Lost Father, A Regular Guy and Off Keck Road.
Her work has been awarded several prizes: A Whiting Prize, A Guggenheim, a grant from the NEA, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Prize, a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, Pen Faulkner finalist, and most recently a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
She worked ten years on My Hollywood. “It’s the book that took me too long because it meant to much to me,” she says.
Mona lives in Santa Monica with her two children and Bartelby the dog.
For more about upcoming readings and events, visit Mona's website http://www.monasimpson.com
and her Facebook author page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mona-Si...
Her work has been awarded several prizes: A Whiting Prize, A Guggenheim, a grant from the NEA, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Prize, a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, Pen Faulkner finalist, and most recently a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
She worked ten years on My Hollywood. “It’s the book that took me too long because it meant to much to me,” she says.
Mona lives in Santa Monica with her two children and Bartelby the dog.
For more about upcoming readings and events, visit Mona's website http://www.monasimpson.com
and her Facebook author page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mona-Si...
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inexplicabilis
August 24, 2023I needed to work to get through this novel, mostly because of my personal challenge with the prose style. As an extremely precise reader, aka autistic person, I have trouble with language that lands close to its meanings but doesn’t quite say what it means.
For instance:
“When Walter opened the door, his roommate bolted up in bed, quickly pulling a T shirt over his head. He stuck out a hand, saying ‘Ken,’ but didn’t get up, Walter assumed, because of his mother and sister. He probably didn’t have on pants. As Walter looked around the bare room, he stopped at a horn in the corner, mostly hidden by a brown cover but showing one patch of gold.”
My first problem is I don’t know whether ‘pulling a T shirt over his head’ means he’s pulling it ON or OFF. Should I know? Does every other reader know but me? Then comes ‘he stuck out a hand, saying ‘Ken.’ Okay I can imagine it’s stuck out for somebody to shake, but nobody does. The hand just stays stuck out there while ‘Walter looked around the bare room.’
But it’s only then that my ability to use context clues really falls apart: “As Walter looked around the bare room, he stopped at a horn in the corner, mostly hidden by a brown cover but showing one patch of gold.” Honestly at this stage I feel like a frustrated AI program because the first image in my head was of a shofar in the corner, maybe? ‘Horn’ just seems so weirdly vague if it’s an instrument. My mental image landed on ‘trombone’ eventually but what the heck a ‘cover’ looks like (does this mean a soft case for the ‘horn,’ maybe?) I’m sort of lost to imagine. Also I’m thinking in a distracted sort of way that this room doesn’t feel ‘bare’ if there is a horn in the corner with a blanket over it. The only ‘bare’ thing is Ken. Maybe.
Anyhoo. The whole book elides for me instead of sticking on any meaning I can count on. I believe it's written in a style that most readers will have no trouble with at all. It’s as if they’re in mental communion with the writer and can just go along merrily reading and say ‘I know what you mean’ and really mean it. I can't do it. My brain refuses. I was stuck on nearly every sentence. It was like reading a foreign language. I got to the end in an eat-your-vegetables kind of way but it left me feeling alienated from my native language and also maybe the entire human race.
For instance:
“When Walter opened the door, his roommate bolted up in bed, quickly pulling a T shirt over his head. He stuck out a hand, saying ‘Ken,’ but didn’t get up, Walter assumed, because of his mother and sister. He probably didn’t have on pants. As Walter looked around the bare room, he stopped at a horn in the corner, mostly hidden by a brown cover but showing one patch of gold.”
My first problem is I don’t know whether ‘pulling a T shirt over his head’ means he’s pulling it ON or OFF. Should I know? Does every other reader know but me? Then comes ‘he stuck out a hand, saying ‘Ken.’ Okay I can imagine it’s stuck out for somebody to shake, but nobody does. The hand just stays stuck out there while ‘Walter looked around the bare room.’
But it’s only then that my ability to use context clues really falls apart: “As Walter looked around the bare room, he stopped at a horn in the corner, mostly hidden by a brown cover but showing one patch of gold.” Honestly at this stage I feel like a frustrated AI program because the first image in my head was of a shofar in the corner, maybe? ‘Horn’ just seems so weirdly vague if it’s an instrument. My mental image landed on ‘trombone’ eventually but what the heck a ‘cover’ looks like (does this mean a soft case for the ‘horn,’ maybe?) I’m sort of lost to imagine. Also I’m thinking in a distracted sort of way that this room doesn’t feel ‘bare’ if there is a horn in the corner with a blanket over it. The only ‘bare’ thing is Ken. Maybe.
Anyhoo. The whole book elides for me instead of sticking on any meaning I can count on. I believe it's written in a style that most readers will have no trouble with at all. It’s as if they’re in mental communion with the writer and can just go along merrily reading and say ‘I know what you mean’ and really mean it. I can't do it. My brain refuses. I was stuck on nearly every sentence. It was like reading a foreign language. I got to the end in an eat-your-vegetables kind of way but it left me feeling alienated from my native language and also maybe the entire human race.
April 20, 2023
Audiobook….read by Xe Sands
…..14 hours and 33 minutes
The prose felt a little curvy- lazy-stylishly- slow-to me ….long-winded, I suppose is a way to describe it….
which may have been due to the audiobook format….
but
because the 1970’s ….into the 80’s were an indelible period in my own life — both in Berkeley— Los Angeles— and personal growth ….
I kept listening
and listening ….
and listening….
….with a quasi-incisive mind….a trying patient mind ….my own thoughts roaming ….hoping for the pace to pick up ….(quasi-enjoying it)…
The story suspended decades.
At times, I was worried, it was going to take me a decade to finish…. a test of my own commitment?/ha!
The haunting themes gave a panoramic sighting into how mental illness affected the Aziz family….who lived in Los Angeles.
We follow the story of a single mother, a nurse by profession….[Diane]….who was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She had severe depression.
Diane had three children: Walter, Lina, and Donnie…..(an absent husband/father), and a close friend of Diane’s [Julie, also a nurse], who stepped in to help (surrogate mother type)….
The story begins when Walter is in Berkeley… a UC student….with a passion for architecture.
His younger sister, Lina, a good student, is still in high school, decides college wasn’t in the cards for her given her mother’s illness.
Donnie, the youngest needs his own institutionalized facility (rehab) as he has descended into addiction.
The story drags on too long — but the emotional inquiry about how a distraught family survived…
…maneuvered the disarray of their lives —
bills needed to be paid …their emotional states, confusion, shame, grief, fear, anger, resentment, hopelessness, sadness, loyalty & sacrifices…
instigates, inflames, and outlines the ‘callings & responsibilities’ with great knowledge and understanding of family breakdowns… and how each family member is affected differently.
The emotional challenges and meltdowns could destroy any family.
Mona Simpson paints a heartbreaking story …. with truth, and empathy….
….but the pacing is slow …
It takes some commitment from the reader to listen to 14 hours and 33 minutes….
Although the audio-reader did a fine job — with the books length (400+ pages) — ‘some’ scenes didn’t contribute anything cohesively to the whole …
I think - even though it was easy to follow - I might have preferred to have read this ….
There were flaws (text or audio) …. but there was also a compelling complex story highlighting love, sacrifice with honest voices from each of the characters.
…..14 hours and 33 minutes
The prose felt a little curvy- lazy-stylishly- slow-to me ….long-winded, I suppose is a way to describe it….
which may have been due to the audiobook format….
but
because the 1970’s ….into the 80’s were an indelible period in my own life — both in Berkeley— Los Angeles— and personal growth ….
I kept listening
and listening ….
and listening….
….with a quasi-incisive mind….a trying patient mind ….my own thoughts roaming ….hoping for the pace to pick up ….(quasi-enjoying it)…
The story suspended decades.
At times, I was worried, it was going to take me a decade to finish…. a test of my own commitment?/ha!
The haunting themes gave a panoramic sighting into how mental illness affected the Aziz family….who lived in Los Angeles.
We follow the story of a single mother, a nurse by profession….[Diane]….who was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She had severe depression.
Diane had three children: Walter, Lina, and Donnie…..(an absent husband/father), and a close friend of Diane’s [Julie, also a nurse], who stepped in to help (surrogate mother type)….
The story begins when Walter is in Berkeley… a UC student….with a passion for architecture.
His younger sister, Lina, a good student, is still in high school, decides college wasn’t in the cards for her given her mother’s illness.
Donnie, the youngest needs his own institutionalized facility (rehab) as he has descended into addiction.
The story drags on too long — but the emotional inquiry about how a distraught family survived…
…maneuvered the disarray of their lives —
bills needed to be paid …their emotional states, confusion, shame, grief, fear, anger, resentment, hopelessness, sadness, loyalty & sacrifices…
instigates, inflames, and outlines the ‘callings & responsibilities’ with great knowledge and understanding of family breakdowns… and how each family member is affected differently.
The emotional challenges and meltdowns could destroy any family.
Mona Simpson paints a heartbreaking story …. with truth, and empathy….
….but the pacing is slow …
It takes some commitment from the reader to listen to 14 hours and 33 minutes….
Although the audio-reader did a fine job — with the books length (400+ pages) — ‘some’ scenes didn’t contribute anything cohesively to the whole …
I think - even though it was easy to follow - I might have preferred to have read this ….
There were flaws (text or audio) …. but there was also a compelling complex story highlighting love, sacrifice with honest voices from each of the characters.
March 18, 2023
2.5 stars
Commitment by Mona Simpson is a novel about a single mother who falls into a deep depression and enters a California state hospital in the 1970s, leaving her children to navigate their own paths. The story follows her son Walter's passion for architecture and struggle to afford college, his sister Lina's attempt to attend an Ivy League school and become an artist, and their brother Donny's growing addiction to drugs. The novel explores themes of family, duty, and the struggles that arise when a parent becomes ill, offering a quiet portrayal of the American family.
Despite its ambitious premise and themes, the novel's execution lacked emotional resonance, resulting in a flat and less engaging story. The narrative seemed burdened with a story it was reluctant to share, resulting in a delivery full of truncated, disinterested sentences. Simpson's writing style crafted a strangely distant narrative with no guaranteed connection to each sentence in the paragraphs, as if this story began its life as a strange, unwieldy pseudo-haiku before it grew up just as off-kilter. Simpson relayed all with an unloading of character fragments, comings or goings or doings, and the barest passing moment of figurative language.
The story felt abandoned, neglected, or adrift, leaving the reader on a raft floating in the vastness of the quiet and potential randomness of Commitment and its characters. The plot seemed to have a greater hold on the book than the characters or their decisions, with paragraphs as mere summaries and pieces of movements unfinished or unfulfilled.
True character development seems to happen off-page, with the seedling for change or growth mostly on the page, but usually around the time Simpson changes the narrator and point of view. The narrative progresses fairly chronologically, except when it doesn't. In those spots, which increase in frequency as the novel continues, Simpson throws in references to events that had previously occurred but had not been mentioned when at the time in which they would've taken place. This creates an odd feeling of leaping about with the truth, potentially separating the reader from the characters, and plugging in the feeling of the author's presence, "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this earlier." Sure you did.
Overall, Commitment tackles important themes such as family, duty, and illness, but its execution falls short in delivering an emotionally resonant and engaging story. The detached narrative style and frequent jumps in time and perspective hinder the ability to fully connect with the characters and their experiences, resulting in a novel that feels unfulfilled and ultimately unsatisfying.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
Commitment by Mona Simpson is a novel about a single mother who falls into a deep depression and enters a California state hospital in the 1970s, leaving her children to navigate their own paths. The story follows her son Walter's passion for architecture and struggle to afford college, his sister Lina's attempt to attend an Ivy League school and become an artist, and their brother Donny's growing addiction to drugs. The novel explores themes of family, duty, and the struggles that arise when a parent becomes ill, offering a quiet portrayal of the American family.
Despite its ambitious premise and themes, the novel's execution lacked emotional resonance, resulting in a flat and less engaging story. The narrative seemed burdened with a story it was reluctant to share, resulting in a delivery full of truncated, disinterested sentences. Simpson's writing style crafted a strangely distant narrative with no guaranteed connection to each sentence in the paragraphs, as if this story began its life as a strange, unwieldy pseudo-haiku before it grew up just as off-kilter. Simpson relayed all with an unloading of character fragments, comings or goings or doings, and the barest passing moment of figurative language.
The story felt abandoned, neglected, or adrift, leaving the reader on a raft floating in the vastness of the quiet and potential randomness of Commitment and its characters. The plot seemed to have a greater hold on the book than the characters or their decisions, with paragraphs as mere summaries and pieces of movements unfinished or unfulfilled.
True character development seems to happen off-page, with the seedling for change or growth mostly on the page, but usually around the time Simpson changes the narrator and point of view. The narrative progresses fairly chronologically, except when it doesn't. In those spots, which increase in frequency as the novel continues, Simpson throws in references to events that had previously occurred but had not been mentioned when at the time in which they would've taken place. This creates an odd feeling of leaping about with the truth, potentially separating the reader from the characters, and plugging in the feeling of the author's presence, "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this earlier." Sure you did.
Overall, Commitment tackles important themes such as family, duty, and illness, but its execution falls short in delivering an emotionally resonant and engaging story. The detached narrative style and frequent jumps in time and perspective hinder the ability to fully connect with the characters and their experiences, resulting in a novel that feels unfulfilled and ultimately unsatisfying.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
March 21, 2025
I don't have much to say about this one. I liked the premise of the story and the relationships between the characters. However, there wasn't anything that really stuck out to make this book very memorable. Three stars because I enjoyed the reading experience and because mental health should get all the attention we can give it in order to normalize talking about it without stigmatizing it.
February 6, 2023
What does “commitment” really mean? In the broadest sense, a commitment is an agreement or pledge to do something in the future. But it can equally mean being willing to give your time and energy to something you believe in, binding yourself to a course of action, or choosing a course of continued love, happiness and fidelity. For an unfortunate few, it can also signify being voluntarily or involuntarily committed to a hospital setting.
All these definitions of commitment are explored in Mona Simpson’s latest novel, which explores the effect of a mentally ill mother’s collapse on her young family and the saving grace of sibling connections and friendships.
When Diane Aziz falls into a deep depression, it falls upon her best friend, Julie, to create a sort of home for Walter, Lina and Donnie. Each of them experiences the reverberations of Diane’s long-term hospitalization in his or her own way. Walter, the oldest, excels at Berkeley, where he is driven to be the master of his own destiny, first by studying medicine, and then by pursuing a career in architecture. Through sheer force of will, he creates a profitable and stable life.
Lina, his younger sister, who is equally bright, takes an “all or nothing” approach to getting into a prestigious Ivy League college. When her high stakes gamble doesn’t succeed, she pursues a love of art and also of a man she is head over heels about, who also elicits feelings of potential loss that may be lurking right around the corner.
And Donnie, the youngest, is left behind (literally and figuratively, since his role is only defined much later in the novel) begins to drift and feel the seductive siren call of escape and drugs.
Ms. Simpson foregoes bells and whistles and inorganic plot twists to simply let these characters reveal themselves, their yearnings and struggles, and their various approaches to creating lives that are filled with individual meaning. While a little editing down could have helped, I loved getting to know Walter, Lina and Donnie. Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for enabling me to be an early reader in exchange for an honest review.
January 22, 2023
At times I got bogged down in this book because it became very depressing, but I soldiered on and ended up really enjoying it! Diane is a single mother raising Walter, Donnie, and Lina; she uses another address to get them into a fancy school and later Walter gets accepted into UC Berkeley. Happy to be away from home, he thrives there and does well, but his siblings are another story. And so this is the tale of a family trying to make it in the midst of many struggles financially, economically, mentally, and physically. But they are "committed," to each other, to their community, and often to other things outside of their control. I'm so glad I stuck with it as it's an homage to families who may not have it all but will make the best of what they DO have to not only survive but to thrive in this often-cruel world!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
March 27, 2023
Anyone who read Simpson’s earlier books will be mystified by this one. When did she decide sentences should barely contain anything more than a noun and a verb? When did she create characters that move through the book like silent sentries, doing one thing or another, with only the briefest explanations of motives and feelings? How can reviewers fail to point out the book’s glaring weaknesses?
May 6, 2023
To sum this one up, I am so sorry that I made the commitment to finish the novel “Commitment”. I am not sure how this book came to my attention and what led me to add to my To Read list, but I need to do a hard refresh on that path for future selections. This book was a major disappointment and ended up being a labor to “just finish”. I am too avoidant of ever having a DNF after about 100 pages in but I should have saved myself and sacrificed the 100-200 pages at the front end to avoid the back end 300-200 pages. It did NOT get better. I am not sure I have ever given a book a 1 star rating but that is how I feel about Mona Simpson’s novel. Her writing style frustrates ( as other reviewers have pointed out). Writing in a very stinted way such that you are forced to re-read a sentence and then fill in the gaps. Why would I want to do that? If you have a story to tell me, tell it! Don’t leave it up to me to guess at what just happened. The conflict in this book is the mother of a family of three being institutionalized for mental illness/ depression. You wait for that conflict to be resolved while the children grow up and have their own lives while dealing in their separate ways with their mother’s condition. The problem is that the stories of their life paths are told so poorly ( and frankly without much action) that this reader was disinterested. The writing is so poor and longish that at page 375 I feel like the characters must be in their 40’s by this point but instead they are in their mid to late 20’s. Too slow of a burn for this reader. The climax is also disappointing and doesn’t reward the reader for sticking it out. As Elaine on Seinfeld once said, this was just a bunch of “Blah, blah, blah, blah blah”.
May 21, 2023
One of those times when I must ask: is it the book, or is it me? It took me almost two months to finish this book because ya boy has been BUSY. A recent move, a new job…the last few months haven’t been good for my reading. Hoping that changes soon.
I thought I’d love Commitment: a literary family drama set in the 1970s and dealing in large part with mental illness? Sign me the fuck up, no questions. I bought this book new, at full price. And it never got beyond feeling like it was spinning its wheels, trying desperately to shift into second gear. The gear at which this book operated was fine, just fine, but a bit tedious and never truly gripping. At least, for me. And again … my focus and attention span aren’t what they were even a year ago. Damn Tiktok.
I can’t help feeling like this book is getting a raw deal from me, and maybe I should rate it higher because two stars is harsh … but I’ve read similar novels that cover these themes much more effectively and with more precision. It felt like this story never WENT THERE. We never got out of the shallow end. So two stars it is.
I thought I’d love Commitment: a literary family drama set in the 1970s and dealing in large part with mental illness? Sign me the fuck up, no questions. I bought this book new, at full price. And it never got beyond feeling like it was spinning its wheels, trying desperately to shift into second gear. The gear at which this book operated was fine, just fine, but a bit tedious and never truly gripping. At least, for me. And again … my focus and attention span aren’t what they were even a year ago. Damn Tiktok.
I can’t help feeling like this book is getting a raw deal from me, and maybe I should rate it higher because two stars is harsh … but I’ve read similar novels that cover these themes much more effectively and with more precision. It felt like this story never WENT THERE. We never got out of the shallow end. So two stars it is.
April 28, 2025
Mona Simpson offers a soft-focus story of three middle class, Southern California siblings whose mother undergoes a multiyear hospitalization because of mental illness. Xe Sands reads the audiobook.
February 12, 2023
I received an ARC of Commitment from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my review.
It took a lot of commitment to stick with and finish this book, but I am so glad I did! Commitment is an epic, coming-of-age story about 3 siblings whose mother succumbs to mental illness and is committed to a mental institution while they are all quite young. The commitment was supposed to be temporary, but she never does come home. A friend of the mother's commits to raising the 3 kids and they become her life. Yes, the theme of commitment is woven throughout the story, to the 2 older children who struggle to commit to post-secondary education. The youngest bears most of the brunt of his mother's illness and the older siblings commit to helping him through his issues. The 3 siblings are also committed to their mother and their stand-in mother. This is a deep, immersive read that will stick with you for a long time. I'm still processing the magic of the author's storytelling. Not only is she a prolific wordsmith, in Commitment, she spins a story that makes the reader feel as if part of the background. Highly recommended!
It took a lot of commitment to stick with and finish this book, but I am so glad I did! Commitment is an epic, coming-of-age story about 3 siblings whose mother succumbs to mental illness and is committed to a mental institution while they are all quite young. The commitment was supposed to be temporary, but she never does come home. A friend of the mother's commits to raising the 3 kids and they become her life. Yes, the theme of commitment is woven throughout the story, to the 2 older children who struggle to commit to post-secondary education. The youngest bears most of the brunt of his mother's illness and the older siblings commit to helping him through his issues. The 3 siblings are also committed to their mother and their stand-in mother. This is a deep, immersive read that will stick with you for a long time. I'm still processing the magic of the author's storytelling. Not only is she a prolific wordsmith, in Commitment, she spins a story that makes the reader feel as if part of the background. Highly recommended!
April 13, 2023
I can’t believe this book’s average rating of 3.75 at this time. I wasn’t long into it when I felt completely absorbed. Here I found three young people long ago abandoned by their father, now bereft when their mother has a major depressive dive and must go into a mental asylum. How they each deal with the pain, guilt, relative poverty and deprivation that follows made for spell-binding reading. I am one of those persons that loves to worry over characters in books. Not thrillers. Literary or what they call domestic fiction, largely about families. Such tales never fail to stir up my emotions.
Why is it so compelling to step into an arena of other people’s problems when my family, my friends, as well as myself have plenty of our own? Especially the older you get… I guess it is just the escape factor. Readers watch these 3 kids grow up and struggle, and it’s all worth it. They are damaged souls, but they all find ways to,love others, themselves and the world. Bravo!
Why is it so compelling to step into an arena of other people’s problems when my family, my friends, as well as myself have plenty of our own? Especially the older you get… I guess it is just the escape factor. Readers watch these 3 kids grow up and struggle, and it’s all worth it. They are damaged souls, but they all find ways to,love others, themselves and the world. Bravo!
April 8, 2023
This book spoke to me as have earlier books by Mona Simpson. Simpson writes what she knows - she sets her books in places where she has dwelled and writes of complicated families like her own.
I wanted everything to be okay for Walter, Lina, and Donnie.
What a special friend and person Julie is!
The art, architecture, and history of the asylum were extras that made this book special.
I work in psychiatry and I only wish we still had places similar to the old institutions like the one in this story which really did exist in Norwalk, CA. It’s still there - only in a very different capacity today.
I wanted everything to be okay for Walter, Lina, and Donnie.
What a special friend and person Julie is!
The art, architecture, and history of the asylum were extras that made this book special.
I work in psychiatry and I only wish we still had places similar to the old institutions like the one in this story which really did exist in Norwalk, CA. It’s still there - only in a very different capacity today.
August 18, 2024
Not my favorite. I was very invested in two of the three characters. Could have been about 100 pages shorter.
Want to read
January 21, 2023My first from this author.
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
August 4, 2023
It's Los Angeles in the early 1970s and Diane Aziz, orphaned as a child, who'd grown up in an orphanage, put herself through college, is a nurse and single mother, caring for her three children, Walter, Lina, and Donnie, without any help from her ex-husband. Indeed, the father is not part of their lives at all. The novel opens slowly, seems to have all the time in the world, and indeed it moves at its own pace and it took me a while to fall into it, to find its rhythm, as it moves among the family members. Diane has kept it together, has lied about where they live to get her children into a better school in Pacific Palisades. The family lives in a rented bungalow, and she rents out a room to a boarder to offset the rent. It's a precarious life, but one of love, and the family is making it work. And then Walter, Diane's bright star of an eldest son, heads to college at UC Berkeley and things start to fall apart. Diane eventually takes to her bed, bills go unpaid, no food in the fridge, Lina and Donnie eating the ice cream she brings home from her job. State hospitals, art, architecture, mental illness, the earliest mental illness hospitals, there is all that and more that Simpson has explored and wound into this novel. Other than Diane's illness, which the children hope is temporary, even as it proves not to be, there are no huge plot lines, this book takes as its subject the lives of these family members, and throws in several fairy godmothers who help to maintain the unit and shepherd it forward. There is Julie, about whom I would have liked to know much more. A friend of Diane's, a fellow nurse, it is she who keeps the family together - how many friends would be this selfless? And she remains so even as Diane waves her away at their visits. There is the real estate developer who helps Walter and sets him on his path. There is Lina's high school English teacher who gets her into Barnard. Shame and melancholy infuse the children all through their lives, though each attains some sort of success, despite their own losses and pitfalls. Were the 1970s an easier time to be a serious depressive? Even in a state hospital? Perhaps, at least where Diane is, the head doctor and the nurses all care, become friends with the children. There are more medicines it seems now, but then was a time when states gave money to mental illness institutions, and people still interacted. Would anyone today do what Julie does - give up her life to care for these children? I don't know.
February 23, 2023
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC
This book took me a very long time to get through. It is a very tough read, not because it's bad at all, but because it's heavy. More often than not I had to put it down after just a few sentences because of the emotional density of it all. The sentence structure is very "stream-of-consciousness" and I can't decide if this is the writers style overall or if it was done with purpose to draw you into the the mental illness pervasive throughout the entire story.
I worked in a psych hospital for awhile, and while I was drawn into the everyday lives of the patients, I was never able to truly see the toll on the families. Particularly the families who stayed invested in the patents while they were locked away, which unfortunately wasn't many. The fact that the burden is carried by children in this story is particularly heartbreaking.
If it wasn't for the great love surrounding the characters and tying them together I don't think I would have been able to get through this book. I know I'll continue to think about this book for quite some time, and to feel a lingering sadness for these characters who are forever affected and never truly healed by the experience of mental illness.
This book took me a very long time to get through. It is a very tough read, not because it's bad at all, but because it's heavy. More often than not I had to put it down after just a few sentences because of the emotional density of it all. The sentence structure is very "stream-of-consciousness" and I can't decide if this is the writers style overall or if it was done with purpose to draw you into the the mental illness pervasive throughout the entire story.
I worked in a psych hospital for awhile, and while I was drawn into the everyday lives of the patients, I was never able to truly see the toll on the families. Particularly the families who stayed invested in the patents while they were locked away, which unfortunately wasn't many. The fact that the burden is carried by children in this story is particularly heartbreaking.
If it wasn't for the great love surrounding the characters and tying them together I don't think I would have been able to get through this book. I know I'll continue to think about this book for quite some time, and to feel a lingering sadness for these characters who are forever affected and never truly healed by the experience of mental illness.
April 21, 2023
3.6, rounded down/ Thought provoking family saga centering around the mental health of three teenager's single mother and its ripple effects in their lives over the coming decades.
The book asked a lot of important and intriguing emotional questions about family, friendship, the worried well, the impact a parent's diagnosis has, the responsibility of children... there was a lot packed in. Saying that, it was also a little bit boring. The pacing was a bit adagio for my taste, we lingered long in scenes and in moments. Mona Simpson is, of course, a fabulous writer -- on a sentence level and as a storyteller, and I think the book's characters and emotional questions will stay with me in ways, but not plot aspects.
The book asked a lot of important and intriguing emotional questions about family, friendship, the worried well, the impact a parent's diagnosis has, the responsibility of children... there was a lot packed in. Saying that, it was also a little bit boring. The pacing was a bit adagio for my taste, we lingered long in scenes and in moments. Mona Simpson is, of course, a fabulous writer -- on a sentence level and as a storyteller, and I think the book's characters and emotional questions will stay with me in ways, but not plot aspects.
May 28, 2023
I struggled through this book, wondering often what the point of it was. The characters were shadows of people, and I'm not sure if I was supposed to like them. People came and went with no real meaning, like someone telling me a story of a bunch of people I may have met once but don't really know.
I kept waiting for the why of it. What happened to their mother? What was actually wrong? Did Walter find happiness? WAs money all he wanted? Is Donnie ok? I don't know how to invest in characters when none of them seem particularly invested.
I kept waiting for the why of it. What happened to their mother? What was actually wrong? Did Walter find happiness? WAs money all he wanted? Is Donnie ok? I don't know how to invest in characters when none of them seem particularly invested.
October 26, 2023
I did this book a disservice by putting it down for two weeks when I was 50 pages from the end. And I ended up loving the end! But this is a very long examination of the lives of three siblings whose mom is institutionalized. You follow each sibling in turn, which can be frustrating when you only want to know how things are going for the sibling you were just reading about. And the dog named Sylvia and friend named Shirley ended up confusing me.
March 15, 2023
This book did not live up to the hype. It s enjoyable enough but I found the storyline flat and the characters very one dimensional
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March 8, 202414: Commitment by Mona Simpson
If you read my reviews with any regularity, you know that they often include my own "story" behind the reading of the book. And you may know or not know that ultimately I'm never "here" to spoil anything. If I gained something from the book, I'm ultimately recommending that you read it, too, if you feel like it...and preferably that "we" then chat about it once you have, to discuss all the things. And if I feel like I can, alternately, save you from reading something that was "painful" to read, for its lack of editing, its confusing structure and/or content, etc., etc., then I am still absolutely leaving it up to you to read it yourself and still chat with me.
That...is always my ultimate goal: to increase the readership of books I have read so that I can then discuss those books with other readers of them. Like a book club but not limited to one book a month. (Watch for further details very soon of how I aim to build this idea...Emerson Acres-wide.)
All of that said, my reading of Mona Simpson's Commitment is a storied tale. Once upon a time and a very long time ago, I read Mona Simpson's Off Keck Road. My best guess is that it was very shortly after it was published...which was 2000, according to the internet. I believe that my godmother shared it with my mother, the book set in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where we are also "set," who then shared it with me. I think it was still with my classroom books when I moved them out in 2017.
Last spring I visited my cousin in San Diego. We were in Mission Beach and hunting a parking spot near the roller coaster, I believe, when we began discussing Steve Jobs...my cousin having worked decades in the computer/tech world...and she asked whether I knew of Steve Jobs's connection to Green Bay and Mona Simpson. I was stunned.
This prompted me to, last summer, read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, which outlines this very story of their story--that Steve Jobs and Mona Simpson are full siblings, biologically, their mother a Green Bay local, Steve adopted in California by the Jobses and Mona born after their parents married but raised primarily by her mother...and much of her young adulthood spent in California. Steve did not "find" her or know any of this of his own story until he was, if I recall correctly, in his 30s, and having hired an investigator to find his parents. Mona was then living awfully near him in California, herself, and she was already an established author.
I became absolutely fascinated by all of this...this connection to Green Bay, which is my hometown as well, and a story that certainly played out to very interesting conclusions for all involved.
When we were in Peninsula State Park in Door County one day last July, having hiked from our campsite to Eagle Tower to meet some friends visiting--from Germany, no less, and THIS our hour and place to meet them--my husband and I had some time so read all of the donor/memorial bricks and plaques, where supporters and sponsors of this magnificently new and improved--accessible to all and in beautiful ways--Eagle Tower are noted. We knew ahead of time how involved in the project and named multiple times his aunt was...is...so were not surprised by that. But we were also pleased to see other names of friends and acquaintances--some shared, some from our individual past lives--we'd not expected to see. And there, on one of the four walls of the little wood-sided building at the bottom of the ramp, likely noticed by some and known to even fewer, is the name: Mona Simpson.
I took a picture. My self-connecting of all of these things and ideas was just wild. I sent the photo to my cousin in San Diego. And I decided I needed to read some more Mona Simpson.
I put multiple books on hold at the library. They came to me at my turn, I renewed them, returned them when I had to, checked them out again. THIS...this is the "game" I play with myself to put on hold titles as I learn of them, all of them coming my way at the same time, me juggling them as fast as I can with the others in my tbr stacks, renewing them as able, reading first those that are due first and/or cannot be renewed--usually those in highest demand. So then I found myself with Commitment again and willing to commit...har...to reading it "this" time.
And as I did I was surprised to learn, early on, that this book of Mona Simpson's is new, having just come out in 2023, nearly exactly a year ago, it seems. And I was not surprised, in reading it, to believe that lots and lots of these fictional pieces and parts of the story are awfully similar to Simpson's life.
Commitment is a long story set in the 1970s-1980s and told from the perspectives, primarily, of three siblings, Walter, Lina, and Donnie, growing up in Los Angeles, and attending Palisades High School "illegally," their mother, Diane, determined toward their best education. When the story begins, in fact, they are delivering Walter to his freshman year at UC-Berkeley.
For most of the book, their father, an Afghan man, is not present at all. In fact, when references to him are made later in the book, his presence or not is even flimsier as a construct. All I note is that Simpson's (and Jobs's) father was a Syrian man. Even though he married Simpson's mother, that was short-lived, Simpson's last name coming from her mother's second husband, who adopted her.
And when Donnie spends lots and lots of time for a while in a computer lab, I saw Jobs and what Simpson would have learned about him from him, herself, or more as I did, from Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, I think, and then again in the Walter Isaacson biography.
All of this is to say that I admittedly read Commitment differently from how I read many novels, I think. I read it to learn more about Mona Simpson, the author and person, than to read a particular title.
And this is all to say that this may have prompted me to be more accepting than some other readers of its rather unusual narrative style present in this book, very much stream-of-consciousness. Honestly, if I hadn't been in it and "committed" to it, I may have put it down before I finished, as there are truly paragraphs that trail off, one after the other, to completely different topics, leave them, move on or don't. It's very odd if looked at, specifically, just that.
And yet...this is also extremely close to the way my own mind, hourly, works.
Seriously, I can read one line of a book and find in it one word that takes me back to a childhood memory or connects me to something or someone else, and bang, I'm gone for minutes to some other place, sometimes still "pretending" to read while my mind tries to multi-task, typically closing that reminiscence valve and going back to reread everything I just missed. My life, my mind, is many-tentacled, fully ON more hours of the day than not, making sense of and connection to allllll of the things and people, past and present, connecting all kinds of dots and then sometimes erasing those connections for having learned more and realizing that I'd misconnected them in the first place...and on and on.
So while this stream-of-consciousness narration is upsetting to some readers--at least I think that's in part what they're criticizing--I felt, in ways, "at home" inside of it as well.
Diane Aziz, Walter, Lina, and Donnie's mother--back to her--is "committed" to a friendly institution after her dear friend Julie intervenes when Diane stops going to work, doing the things, etc. And Walter struggles with "commitment" to completing college and/or marrying, initially. Lina, too, struggles with "commitment" in a number of ways. And Donnie becomes committed to...know what? You likely get it; this title, "Commitment" works and on a number of levels and multiple denotations. But you need to read the book yourself to grow through its stories and meet its characters, spend the time with them all.
And then...let me know! I'd love to visit with you about any of this...truly!
If you read my reviews with any regularity, you know that they often include my own "story" behind the reading of the book. And you may know or not know that ultimately I'm never "here" to spoil anything. If I gained something from the book, I'm ultimately recommending that you read it, too, if you feel like it...and preferably that "we" then chat about it once you have, to discuss all the things. And if I feel like I can, alternately, save you from reading something that was "painful" to read, for its lack of editing, its confusing structure and/or content, etc., etc., then I am still absolutely leaving it up to you to read it yourself and still chat with me.
That...is always my ultimate goal: to increase the readership of books I have read so that I can then discuss those books with other readers of them. Like a book club but not limited to one book a month. (Watch for further details very soon of how I aim to build this idea...Emerson Acres-wide.)
All of that said, my reading of Mona Simpson's Commitment is a storied tale. Once upon a time and a very long time ago, I read Mona Simpson's Off Keck Road. My best guess is that it was very shortly after it was published...which was 2000, according to the internet. I believe that my godmother shared it with my mother, the book set in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where we are also "set," who then shared it with me. I think it was still with my classroom books when I moved them out in 2017.
Last spring I visited my cousin in San Diego. We were in Mission Beach and hunting a parking spot near the roller coaster, I believe, when we began discussing Steve Jobs...my cousin having worked decades in the computer/tech world...and she asked whether I knew of Steve Jobs's connection to Green Bay and Mona Simpson. I was stunned.
This prompted me to, last summer, read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, which outlines this very story of their story--that Steve Jobs and Mona Simpson are full siblings, biologically, their mother a Green Bay local, Steve adopted in California by the Jobses and Mona born after their parents married but raised primarily by her mother...and much of her young adulthood spent in California. Steve did not "find" her or know any of this of his own story until he was, if I recall correctly, in his 30s, and having hired an investigator to find his parents. Mona was then living awfully near him in California, herself, and she was already an established author.
I became absolutely fascinated by all of this...this connection to Green Bay, which is my hometown as well, and a story that certainly played out to very interesting conclusions for all involved.
When we were in Peninsula State Park in Door County one day last July, having hiked from our campsite to Eagle Tower to meet some friends visiting--from Germany, no less, and THIS our hour and place to meet them--my husband and I had some time so read all of the donor/memorial bricks and plaques, where supporters and sponsors of this magnificently new and improved--accessible to all and in beautiful ways--Eagle Tower are noted. We knew ahead of time how involved in the project and named multiple times his aunt was...is...so were not surprised by that. But we were also pleased to see other names of friends and acquaintances--some shared, some from our individual past lives--we'd not expected to see. And there, on one of the four walls of the little wood-sided building at the bottom of the ramp, likely noticed by some and known to even fewer, is the name: Mona Simpson.
I took a picture. My self-connecting of all of these things and ideas was just wild. I sent the photo to my cousin in San Diego. And I decided I needed to read some more Mona Simpson.
I put multiple books on hold at the library. They came to me at my turn, I renewed them, returned them when I had to, checked them out again. THIS...this is the "game" I play with myself to put on hold titles as I learn of them, all of them coming my way at the same time, me juggling them as fast as I can with the others in my tbr stacks, renewing them as able, reading first those that are due first and/or cannot be renewed--usually those in highest demand. So then I found myself with Commitment again and willing to commit...har...to reading it "this" time.
And as I did I was surprised to learn, early on, that this book of Mona Simpson's is new, having just come out in 2023, nearly exactly a year ago, it seems. And I was not surprised, in reading it, to believe that lots and lots of these fictional pieces and parts of the story are awfully similar to Simpson's life.
Commitment is a long story set in the 1970s-1980s and told from the perspectives, primarily, of three siblings, Walter, Lina, and Donnie, growing up in Los Angeles, and attending Palisades High School "illegally," their mother, Diane, determined toward their best education. When the story begins, in fact, they are delivering Walter to his freshman year at UC-Berkeley.
For most of the book, their father, an Afghan man, is not present at all. In fact, when references to him are made later in the book, his presence or not is even flimsier as a construct. All I note is that Simpson's (and Jobs's) father was a Syrian man. Even though he married Simpson's mother, that was short-lived, Simpson's last name coming from her mother's second husband, who adopted her.
And when Donnie spends lots and lots of time for a while in a computer lab, I saw Jobs and what Simpson would have learned about him from him, herself, or more as I did, from Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, I think, and then again in the Walter Isaacson biography.
All of this is to say that I admittedly read Commitment differently from how I read many novels, I think. I read it to learn more about Mona Simpson, the author and person, than to read a particular title.
And this is all to say that this may have prompted me to be more accepting than some other readers of its rather unusual narrative style present in this book, very much stream-of-consciousness. Honestly, if I hadn't been in it and "committed" to it, I may have put it down before I finished, as there are truly paragraphs that trail off, one after the other, to completely different topics, leave them, move on or don't. It's very odd if looked at, specifically, just that.
And yet...this is also extremely close to the way my own mind, hourly, works.
Seriously, I can read one line of a book and find in it one word that takes me back to a childhood memory or connects me to something or someone else, and bang, I'm gone for minutes to some other place, sometimes still "pretending" to read while my mind tries to multi-task, typically closing that reminiscence valve and going back to reread everything I just missed. My life, my mind, is many-tentacled, fully ON more hours of the day than not, making sense of and connection to allllll of the things and people, past and present, connecting all kinds of dots and then sometimes erasing those connections for having learned more and realizing that I'd misconnected them in the first place...and on and on.
So while this stream-of-consciousness narration is upsetting to some readers--at least I think that's in part what they're criticizing--I felt, in ways, "at home" inside of it as well.
Diane Aziz, Walter, Lina, and Donnie's mother--back to her--is "committed" to a friendly institution after her dear friend Julie intervenes when Diane stops going to work, doing the things, etc. And Walter struggles with "commitment" to completing college and/or marrying, initially. Lina, too, struggles with "commitment" in a number of ways. And Donnie becomes committed to...know what? You likely get it; this title, "Commitment" works and on a number of levels and multiple denotations. But you need to read the book yourself to grow through its stories and meet its characters, spend the time with them all.
And then...let me know! I'd love to visit with you about any of this...truly!
April 30, 2023
Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf for accepting my request to read and review Commitment.
Published: 03/21/23
Took me a while to understand the title had more than one meaning. While the mother was committed, the children had individual and familial commitments to themselves and each other.
Often times I read and think why doesn't anyone write realistic fiction. There are plenty of stories to tell. I think Simpson heard me. A mother with three children and very little money. Dad (of course) MIA -- working on his own life. This story does have a friend, and I found myself many times stopping and wishing (praying) every family had a true family friend in the nonfiction world.
This book is the story of growing up, staying together, achieving an education, all while staying afloat emotionally and financially. Everyone has a dream? The book points out the obvious: who teaches you how to tie your tie, put on makeup, fix your hair, use all the hair styling tools? Who teaches you to drive? Really where does the money come from? Is mental illness hereditary? Who signs loan papers, rental agreements, and food stamp aid when there isn't an adult around?
The story is simple. The writing is slow. The author takes a subject that affects many households and puts her spin on the problems. I choked up several times. I wish I could give this more than three stars. However, don't be fooled, there is a lot of punch packed in these 400 pages.
Published: 03/21/23
Took me a while to understand the title had more than one meaning. While the mother was committed, the children had individual and familial commitments to themselves and each other.
Often times I read and think why doesn't anyone write realistic fiction. There are plenty of stories to tell. I think Simpson heard me. A mother with three children and very little money. Dad (of course) MIA -- working on his own life. This story does have a friend, and I found myself many times stopping and wishing (praying) every family had a true family friend in the nonfiction world.
This book is the story of growing up, staying together, achieving an education, all while staying afloat emotionally and financially. Everyone has a dream? The book points out the obvious: who teaches you how to tie your tie, put on makeup, fix your hair, use all the hair styling tools? Who teaches you to drive? Really where does the money come from? Is mental illness hereditary? Who signs loan papers, rental agreements, and food stamp aid when there isn't an adult around?
The story is simple. The writing is slow. The author takes a subject that affects many households and puts her spin on the problems. I choked up several times. I wish I could give this more than three stars. However, don't be fooled, there is a lot of punch packed in these 400 pages.
June 20, 2023
I found the pacing of this book to be quite slow, but it explores some of my favorite themes to read about— family dynamics, mental illness, coming-of-age journeys, etc.
August 10, 2023
Her writing is gorgeous, and I loved the inside baseball acknowledgement of Donald Judd in Marfa.
July 3, 2023
I assume the author wanted readers to feel with or for the characters, but I didn't feel anything. I'm not sure why, but the characters are flat.
July 26, 2023
Commitment by Mona Simpson was a good book. This is the first time I have read anything by this author and I was pleasantly surprised by the way the story and the characters came together. I love family drama so I was drawn to this story from the beginning.
January 24, 2023
in 1970s california, walter is taken to college. he waits for a phone call to hear that his family made it home safe. relief hits him when his mother finally calls and tells him that she’s home and will call him next sunday. little does walter know that he will be spending almost every sunday with his mom from inside a mental health institution.
while providing deep insight into many characters, the novel does drag in many instances. there were moments i was glued into reading, and other moments i wanted to be done. each character is beautifully written, but the plot was very mellow until the last quarter.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy in exchange for an honest review!!!
while providing deep insight into many characters, the novel does drag in many instances. there were moments i was glued into reading, and other moments i wanted to be done. each character is beautifully written, but the plot was very mellow until the last quarter.
thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy in exchange for an honest review!!!
March 29, 2023
This is a hard review for me, I never stop reading a book I was truly excited to be given this from a giveaway. I really was intrigued my the story from the book information. So I ended up fighting to read the first part of this book. While I was reading I was very confused because she has jumped around from one thing to another. When jumping around without ending these parts. I think as I went through and started the second section it was a lot of the same, but in those part it started jumping from one location and then picked with a different geographic location. Because as I read I kept thinking I had missed something and going back to find and then never found it. I am having to give a truthful review on what I read.
February 7, 2023
Such a beautiful cover and with a "Read now" urging on NetGalley (thanks for the ARC) I couldn't wait to read about one woman's descent into mental illness. Except there were so many characters almost immediately it became quite difficult to keep track of who was who and worse, to care.
This wasn't particularly well written and I found it wearisome that it started with Walter's first day at college, a trope done to death.
I mostly skimmed this, because it wasn't interesting enough or engaging enough for me to read properly. It was very slow. I wish I could have given this a better review, based on the cover.
This wasn't particularly well written and I found it wearisome that it started with Walter's first day at college, a trope done to death.
I mostly skimmed this, because it wasn't interesting enough or engaging enough for me to read properly. It was very slow. I wish I could have given this a better review, based on the cover.
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