Commitment by Mona Simpson takes place in the 70's and revolves around the mom, Diane, who is dealing with a mental illness and has to be hospitalized. This was a very moving story and I felt quite emotional at times.

Commitment by Mona Simpson speaks about commitment in multiple meanings of the word. The premise of the book about a family navigating mental illness should be a moving, compelling story. I applaud the attempt at addressing such an important issue. I just wish for more from the story as a reader. The book leaves a distance between the emotion of the premise and the emotion not quite achieved by the storytelling.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2024/11/commitment.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

Mona Simpson excels in crafting family sagas, and her seventh novel breathes new life into this genre. Set in 1970s and 1980s Los Angeles, the story revolves around the Aziz family: single mother Diane and her children Walter, Lina, and Donnie. Each character is central, collectively forming a kaleidoscopic portrait of a resilient clan of outsiders navigating life's challenges. As Diane battles depression, her children must fend for themselves, abandoned by their father. Despite facing turmoil, Simpson's narrative focuses on perseverance and the resilience of familial bonds, beautifully portraying the sacrifices that hold a family together amidst adversity.

Thanks for the review copy. I struggled with this one with the depressing nature of the book. I felt like there were too many characters. I am sure there are people who will appreciate the book more than I did.

This book takes place in California in the early 70s. It's about a family and their struggles with all kinds of issues they arise as the mother deals with mental health struggles and has to be committed to a state hospital. The book is a little hard to read, in some areas. I feel like some of the sentences-paragraphs are written so poorly that you need to read them over again to be able to understand what the author is saying. Sometimes the story jumps around so much it's hard to follow. The family members all seem like likable people and you find yourself cheering them on & hope that they can accomplish their dreams. I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5.

After reading Mona Simpson’s newest novel, Commitment, it’s easy to understand her previous works have garnered so many accolades, including the Whiting Prize, a Guggenheim, an NEA grant, a Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. One of her novels also was a finalist for the Pen Faulkner Award. Commitment itself fittingly was named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times. I agree with both publications that this was one of the best books I have read in the past year.

It’s a gripping, emotional, intimate tale of one woman grappling with mental illness and its effect on her three children and her steadfast friend. It’s also a wonderful tribute to those who lovingly choose to care for and treat the mentally ill and their families. Commitment forces the reader to consider what it is in life that is of utmost importance. For me, it seems to answer familial love and support. This is an important book that I recommend for anyone interested in reading about family, love, friendship, dedication, and commitment, in more than one sense of the term.

I appreciate being given this book for free as an advanced digital copy by NetGalley and am thankful also to Ms. Simpson and her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, for this terrific opportunity. As a result, I look forward to reading the other books Ms. Simpson has written and to anything she writes in the future. My review is entirely VOLUNTARY.

Commitment by Mona Simpson is a stirring piece of literary fiction. It's a book about class and elitism and duty and the American Dream. It's a book about the lengths a mom will go for her child and the feelings of duty a child can carry.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

I really enjoyed this book. It truly explores a family dynamic when mental illness rears it's ugly head, and threatens to destroy the lives of everyone close by. It can be so challenging, and yet so many judge without really knowing or understanding the damage it causes, and the lack of control you sometimes have over it.
The book follows Walter, Donnie and Lina; the three children of Diane, who has had a breakdown of some sort, and needs to be hospitalized. Thankfully when Diane is shuttered away in the hospital, her close friend Julie helps hold down the fort and she is able to take of Lina and Donnie, while Walter is away at college.
As life goes on, the kids are learning how to navigate their lives without their mom at home, and they each find their own way, with some stumbles and hiccups along the way. Thank goodness for Julie, their rock, who holds it down for them all.
Every day when my day came to an end I looked forward to reading this book, and checking in on the "family." Even though some things that the characters did drove me crazy, it was the same as dealing with a "normal" family. There's always someone doing something that drives another member of the family crazy! I would definitely recommend this book for someone looking to escape with an easy read.

📖 Book Review 📖

📙🎧”Commitment” by Mona Simpson

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Slow moving, sad struggle of a single immigrant mother of three, as she falls
into a deep depression and enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.
Living in LA, working to get her children a better life and education- Diane just can’t do it anymore. Her son Walter is at Berkeley, and worries about how to pay for his education. Lina, the middle child works as much as she can at an ice cream shop while Donny, drifts away from school and into a beach life and drugs.

Family, duty and struggling for the American dream make this family saga a memorable read.


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I knew that a story about a mother with deep depression entering a state hospital in the 1970s, leaving her children all alone to fend for themselves with basically no money and no support system would be a difficult read. I didn't expect to be half way through and still have no emotional connection to any of these sad characters. The book felt flat, for lack of a better word. I just couldn't get invested in the characters or their story, which I believe had to do with the author writing them with no depth. Considering the story line, you would think I would get invested, but no, it never happened. On top of that, there wasn't much action and it is hard to continue reading a book where each page you find yourself desperate for some kind of forward movement. Grateful to the publisher and author for the advanced review copy, but I just didn't care for this one.

This was very interesting! I really enjoyed this and am excited for the authors other books! The topic was very relevant and needed for me in this moment

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, an Afghan, 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. 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 Lina brings home from her job at an ice-cream place. 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, there are no huge plot lines, the book takes as its subject the lives of these children, and throws in several fairy godmothers who help to maintain the family 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, arranging for paid sick leave from their mutual employer, finding Diane the state hospital in Norwalk, taking care of Lina and Donnie, buying the food, paying the rent, staying over on the couch at night, telling Walter to stay at Berkeley, taking the kids to visit Diane every weekend. There is the real estate developer who helps Walter - who is taking premed classes so he can make money but also architecture courses which he has found he loves - by introducing the student to a big box company looking to buy old buildings in the Central Valley and when Walter finds one, there is money for him, but also shock that the company is going to tear down the old building to make their mall. There is Lina's high school English teacher who gets her off the wait list at Barnard and even buys her plane ticket there. There is Julie taking care of Donnie, learning how to cook the food he likes, making sure he studies. How many friends would be this selfless, and she remains so even as Diane waves her away at their visits. Shame and melancholy infuse the children all through their lives, and affects their relationships, 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, and supposedly more knowledge in how to help those with mental illness, 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.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC.

A poignant story whose characters come to life with their relatable personalities. A book I liked reading to find out how Walter who loved Berkley struggled to lrearn and hoped someday to become an architect. He soon learns about his Mother's need to provide for her children against hard odds, led to her depression. Walter and his roomate Ken are industrious and have moneymaking ideas... College life and all the social pressures are enough but Walter's fear causes him and his siblings to pull together to do what they need to do.

I personally struggled to connect with this book. It felt like a chore to pick up and put down and I did not finish it.

Thank you to #NetGalley.

I've been waiting since 2014 for a new book by Mona Simpson. It was worth the wait. I really enjoyed this book though was sad, and depressing book at times. As Walter, Lina and Donnie's mother Diane goes into a depression and is hospitalized in a mental institution, Walter is in college at the time and Lina and Donnie are in high school. Thank goodness for Julie, Diane's best friend who takes care of Lina and Donnie since Walter was in college.

Sometimes it mentioned the future (this was in the 1970s, so the 80s were mentioned) of the kids lives but not specifically but sort of got an idea where it was going but not a spoiler though.

I absolutely loved this family of characters. What a wonderful, deeply layered story of a family. There is something here for everyone: art, dogs, depression, college, medical treatments, drugs, ....but it's more than all that. It's a story of a family - all of them coming of age together.

How does a trio of young siblings grow up and mature when their father is not in the picture and their mother is mentally ill? It’s difficult and sad and without the assistance of a valued friend of their mother would have been almost impossible. This book centers on the siblings and doesn’t develop the friend’s relationship with the mother enough. There’s little or no backstory to their relationship. But the story is compelling.

A character-driven novel I've tried to pick up several times and just don't find myself being drawn too. I'm disappointed this one didn't work out for me because the genre and description are right up my alley. Maybe a case of right book, wrong time? I'll have to try it again in the future,.

This is a very character-driven novel and they aren't often ones you may like but don't let that put you off - it's worth the ride. The exploration of family and depression is heartbreaking and raw and Simpson does it with empathy. Her writing style is unique and may not be for everyone but I found it compelling. Ultimately, this is a story about survival and how honoring your commitments to each other.

Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the copy to review.

This was a hard one for me- I couldn't connect with any of the characters and only found one of them to be redeeming...the rest were almost unbearable to follow and I found myself putting this down more times than I can count. It was extremely slow and while I like books that can make me feel things, this one almost made me feel morose and miserable (not sad, but like depressed- much like the mother).

I did like the point- that we all have commitments in our lives that are separate to our identity but also shared ones that evolve over time with our life experiences. Commitment does not have to equal unhappiness- which was a theme throughout the book and I didn't necessarily agree with.

I will be hesitant to pick up this author again, I was in a general state of gloominess after I finished it,