Book
Commitment
Record details
- ISBN: 9780593319277 (hardcover)
- ISBN: 0593319273 (hardcover)
- ISBN: 9780593319284
-
Physical Description:
print
401 pages ; 25 cm - Edition: First Edition.
- Publisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Mental illness Fiction Children of mentally ill mothers Fiction Success Fiction |
Available copies
- 3 of 3 copies available at Kenton County.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 3 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
Show All Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Covington Branch | SIMPS M (Text) | 33126025421987 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
| Erlanger Branch | SIMPS M (Text) | 33126025422043 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
| Independence Branch | SIMPS M (Text) | 33126025421995 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
- Baker & Taylor
Depicts a family in crisis in the late 1970s when three teenage siblings in California try to manage on their own after their mother is committed to a state hospital for a deep depression. - Baker & Taylor
"The story of a family whose single mom, fighting mental illness, slowly becomes unable to raise her family, told from the perspective of each of the three children. As the novel opens, a mother drives her eldest son Walter from their home in Los Angelesto the University of California at Berkeley. It will be her last fully responsible act before breaking down completely and being committed to a mental hospital, leaving her children behind. Holding tight to his ambitions to become an architect, Walter must cope with the sudden loss of his family and all financial support. With the help of a family friend, his younger sister and brother, still at home, barely manage to escape social services and foster care, but they must fend for themselves as they try to finish school and begin searching for their own careers. We hear each of them tell their own story as they witness the slow disappearance of their beloved mother into mental illness while they struggle to achieve the life she envisioned for them and to keep the family intact"-- - Random House, Inc.
A NEW YORKER AND LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR ⢠A masterful and engrossing novel about a single motherâs collapse and the fate of her family after she enters a California state hospital in the 1970s.
âAÂ sweeping family epic that took me from one American coast to another…Simpson is so attuned to the family heart.â âWeike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay
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 hasnât, sheâs worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven 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 motherâs 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 and Los Angeles to 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.