Commitment is the story of three siblings dealing with their mother’s mental illness that eventually gets her admitted to a state hospital. Walter, Lina and Donny are eventually raised by their mother’s childless friend, but the kids keep in touch with their mom who never gets better, but just adapts to the hospital routine. This is a quiet character study and a coming of age story about how mental illness impacts three different children in three very different ways.

A Very Subtle Survival Story

This book was depressing and brilliant. A single mother of three children, who is a nurse and a merciful woman, sinks into a deep depression when her older son, Walter, leaves for college, Diane Aziz has two other younger children. It is the 1970's and mental health is beginning to become a conversation, but this malady remains tucked away for many Americans.

Our hard-working single mother, Diane Aziz is propelled into the darkest days. She ends up staying in her bed and no longer cleans her house or buys food, even her job is a no-show. She has two other children, Lina , a sixteen year old honor student and Donnie, the youngest. There is no active father; he has been married three times and plays no part in their lives. Diane has a good friend, Julie, another nurse, a good soul, who helps as much as she can. When Diane is admitted into a large mental hospital, we learn more about the three children and the author carries us through their lives, from that beginning to adults. Nothing is steady for them; this is a deep, often painful and solitary journey for the children without their mother. However, Simpson, often paints Diane's Orchard Springs hospital as a refuge with some beauty and belonging and one, good competent doctor who can help her. An excellent book, much to learn, and well-written.

My gratitude Penguin Random House and NetGalley for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Another excellent novel by Mona Simpson! This follows three siblings—eldest Walter, middle Lina, and youngest Donnie—as they navigate their childhood and early adulthood with a mentally ill mother. Simpson crafts their stories with thoughtfulness and empathy.

I had this on my radar and was excited to see it offered as a "Read Now" option on Netgalley. I braced myself for what I was sure was going to be an emotionally heart wrenching book about "a single mother's collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s" but I couldn't get past the prose. I found my mind drifting and I just couldn't stay connected to the story.

A melancholy read, to be sure. about a family affected by the mental illness of the mother. Diane, who has been a single parent to Walter, Lina, and Donnie succumbs to her depression when Walter leaves for college. Luckily, her friend Julie is able to step in to act as a parent for the younger siblings (and for Walter). This shifts between all of them with the first part heavily invested in Walter; Lina seems less important and Donnie an afterthought (although his story and his addiction brings up the end). The title- Commitment- refers not only to Diane, who never leaves the hospital, but of the siblings to one another and their mother and of Julie. That's the charm of this otherwise at times unwieldily tale. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For Simpson's fans.

I love Mona Simpson's novels--have read them all--but this book disappointed me a bit. I was hoping for more vivid writing and deeply imagined characters as in her past novels but didn't find them here.

A lengthy, at times bewilderingly detailed but ultimately affecting saga of love and mental illness in a single Californian family. Simpson quietly displays her years of sensitive observation while tracking the three children and their mother, each forging a separate path but circling always back to the profound connection of blood and inheritance. Expectations aren’t always fulfilled, either for the characters or the narration, nevertheless this is an achievement and a book of restrained impact.

The characters were written beautifully and with a lot of care and emotion. I loved how much love and care the author clearly had for every single character in this book and I felt for and cared for each of them regardless of whether they were "good" or "bad" in their actions and thoughts. This plot would be a lot to take on but the topic of mental health, family, and tragedy was dealt with in a really loving way. This book felt like a warm cup of tea and an excellent soul-scratching therapy session, if not a little too on the nose for my own personal story. Sometimes I felt like I was looking around the room trying to figure out when someone had been following me and gotten inside my inner thoughts. There were definitely some grammar mistakes and the POV changes were a little hard to follow in the beginning but I am so lucky to have gotten to read this book. It has truly touched my heart and it will stay with me for a long time.

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.

This was an... interesting one. I can't say I was crazy about the writing style, and didn't really connect with the characters, but I did make it through all 400+ places with relative ease. I love a family drama that unfolds over a decade or so, and this (set in the 60s/70s in California and Manhattan) hits all those right notes. However it is also pretty depressing, not much happens, and could use a lot of editing.

A trio of siblings learns to fend for themselves after their single mother is committed to a state hospital for mental illness. As it becomes clear she won't be coming home anytime soon, their commitment to each other becomes the forefront of the story and we follow them individually through middle school, high school, college, and early adulthood. I liked spending time with their story, I just wish there was more to the plot and the writing wasn't so convoluted and confusing.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

REVIEW TO FOLLOW.

Commitment was a commitment to read - at times it felt untenably long, but at the end, I wanted more and wasn't ready for it end. Well written characters that were easy to become emotionally invested in, this book took me on a journey I will not soon forget.

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

This is the story of a single mother so far in the depths of depression that she’s institutionalized and how her three children navigate life on their own. I loved that we see how each character handles their life when facing a crisis and how they uniquely handle their responsibility and commitment to one another. This was a beautiful, quiet book that I absolutely loved.

Commitment starts off with a son being dropped off to college at Berkley. he has two sisters and only a mom as his dad is estranged. Soon after his foray into independence his mother falls deeply into depression, unable to pay bills or take care of herself and is sent to an institution in CA called Norwalk. We follow the siblings' journeys as their mother remains hospitalized. We experience their lives through college, jobs, first sexual experiences, marriage, break ups and babies and as they wonder if they too will be infected with "illness".

I enjoyed the majority of this novel. It is slow paced and covers the minutiae of life so if that isn't your bag, definitely steer clear. I found a lot to relate to and felt for the characters and their circumstance. As a kid of a sick parent I definitely saw myself in some of the situations, hopes and wishes.

I would recommend this book to those that like slow family explorations that touch on serious topics like mental health, drug abuse and even coming of age.

Not quite a 4 but rounding up here.

I had a lot of trouble getting through this novel, mostly because of my reaction to the prose style. As an extremely literal reader I have trouble with language that lands close to its meanings but doesn’t quite ever 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 is 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. It’s the kind of writing that a lot of people have no trouble with at all. It’s like they’re in mental communion with the writer and can just go along merrily reading and say ‘I know why you mean’ and ride with it. 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 own native language and also maybe the entire human race.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf press for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review. A story of familial love, choices (good and bad), and one's sense of responsibility. "Commitment" is two-fold here -- both as a life choice (to family, lover, pet, career) and, possibly, as a choice in mental health. The characters are solidly realized and sympathetic, even with their failings. The settings, shifting from LA to New York, are vividly drawn. But ultimately the story dragged for me and at times I was lost in the shifting narrative and time frame.

Thank you NetGalley for this gorgeous, enthralling, could not put it down new novel by amazing Mona Simpson. Diane, Walter, Lina, Diane and Julie absolutely captivated me and actually haunted my dreams. The trajectory of this this family saga is compelled forward by the crippling depression suffered by mother Diane, who is institutionalized. The ways in which the family navigates how to stay a family is heart lifting. I love this book.

Before reading Commitment, I had never read anything by Mona Simpson before and although the novel did not read how I expected, I was pleasantly surprised as the story was in some ways much more complex and endearing than anticipated.

The only issue I had with the novel was the pacing and for me it felt like this differed between characters in a way that was at times meandering and sometimes this made it hard to invest in certain storylines, Donnie’s in particular for me.

Commitment is the story of a how a mother's mental illness affects her teenage and adult children. I was looking forward to reading about how Walter, Lina, and Donnie would live their lives without a present father and with a depressed mother. Unfortunately, the book seemed to go on and on, and not really go anywhere. I enjoyed reading how each of the "kids" managed their educations, work, and social lives while dealing with their mom, until about 75% through the book, and then I began to lose interest and began to skim the chapters. The ending seemed to be predictable.

Thank you, NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review Commitment.