THE ENGAGEMENTS (J. Courtney Sullivan)

The Engagements is not a chick-lit novel, as the title might lead you to believe, but a novel about marriage: sticking together through the bad times, choosing not to marry, abandoning marriage and finding a new love, nontraditional marriage, and long, happy marriage.  I admit that I was somewhat confused during the early parts of this novel.  I initially had a difficult time keeping track of the stories (5 of them, told in short, alternating chapters) and the characters and I'm not sure that the format was helpful.  I understand the author's choice, though, since the stories were unconnected throughout most of the novel.

Mary Frances Gerety, a copywriter at the Ayers Agency, was the real-life creator of the DeBeers' company's famous slogan, "A Diamond is Forever."  In one segment of The Engagements we follow Gerety's fictionalized career and the developments in the diamond industry through much of the twentieth century.  In another, Evelyn has been happily married for more than 40 years, but husband Gilbert was not her first love nor the first man to put a ring on her finger.  We also meet Kate, a green-living non-profit worker who is madly in love with partner Dan and their daughter but is adamantly anti-marriage. Kate's gay cousin, to whom she is very close, is to marry his true love in a lavish ceremony now that same-sex marriage has been legalized.  In yet another separate story, Parisian Delphine leaves her unexciting but reasonably fulfilling marriage to business partner, Henri, to run away to New York with a much younger man with whom she has been having a passionate affair.  Last but not least, there is James, the down-on-his luck EMT who knows that his wife Sheila married beneath her and strives to prove that he is worthy of her love.

One of the things that I ultimately enjoyed most about The Engagements was the multi-layering of times, places, and people, the very thing that also made the novel difficult to follow initially.  It doesn't become apparent until the end of the novel that all of the stories and characters are, indeed, connected despite the fact that all occur in different eras. Would I recommend it?  Yes!