And now for something completely different... but not really...

I don’t usually deal with books here, but Commencement, a first novel by fellow Smith College ’03 alum J. Courtney Sullivan, hit rather close to home.

You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Commencement-novel-J-Courtney-Sullivan/dp/0307270742/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246679278&sr=8-2

And it made the New York Times Book Review (no small feat for a first-time author): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/books/review/Russo-t.html

I read this book with the same set of emotions that accompany any serious consideration I do of my time at Smith College: very mixed ones. I laughed at Celia and Bree worrying about gaining “the freshman fifty” after seeing the upper class women (for the record, I only gained thirty and lost it all after spending a semester abroad). I fondly remembered the uniquely engaging controversy over changing the student constitution from “she” to “the student” in honor of trans-gender rights. I smiled at April shaving her head in a euphoric moment of celebrating shock value. I frowned at the enduring experience of displacement that haunts all the characters—in their lives at Smith and beyond. I cried (well, almost) at a fall-out scene between the four friends—it reminded me that Smith created both my most supportive and devastatingly critical relationships. And I resented the idea that such a complicated experience could be contained within a book’s covers.

And, like my Smith education, I’d do it again, even with the benefit of hindsight.

The book risks making a spectacle of the most formative experience of my life—and I don’t hate it for it. And, in my book, that makes it worth a read.