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ENGAGEMENTS
Author:
Sullivan, J. Courtney
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3619
Print Run: 150000
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ISBN-13: 9780307958716
LCCN: 2012043874
Imprint: Knopf
Publisher: Random House
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Pub Date: 06/11/2013
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $26.95
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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383 pages ; 25 cm.
H 9.5",
W 6.6",
D 1.4",
1.7188 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
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Awards:
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Kirkus Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Kirkus Reviews
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TIPS Subjects:
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General Fiction
Women's Studies
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Women
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Sagas
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LC Subjects:
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Couples, Fiction
Diamonds, Fiction
FICTION / Contemporary Women
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Sagas
Women in the advertising industry, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Diamonds, Fiction
Man-woman relationship, Fiction
Women in the advertising industry, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 02/01/2013 |
| Three women fumble with the ties that bind as they ponder marriage and all its promises...and lies. Evelyn is fine with keeping the second husband she landed 40 years ago; Kate is too happy with her partner of ten years to consider marriage; and advertising copywriter Mary Frances Gerety is determined to make the whole world see that the only happy woman is a married woman. 400pp., 150K, Auth res: Brookyln, NY, Tour |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Kirkus Reviews | 06/01/2013 |
| Is a diamond really forever? So Sullivan (Maine, 2011, etc.) asks in her third novel, which explores the familiar territory of people who can't quite find the old connections but keep looking for them all the same. Frances Gerety, a real person whom Sullivan enlists at the outset of her tale, had a daunting task way back in 1947: She had to cook up an advertising tagline for De Beers that would convince Americans to purchase diamond engagement rings, hitherto "considered just absolutely money down the drain." Sullivan's story takes off from there, diamonds forming a leitmotif in ingeniously connected stories that span generations. As B. Traven advised in his grand tale of gold, precious objects can cause people to do very bad things; so they do here, enacted by a principal character who, though a bit of a sad sack, does what he can to resist temptation until it overwhelms him. That character speaks to the most modern emanation of maleness: He's been laid off, his wife earning more than he when he does work, regretful because he "had failed to live up to his potential." But then, in Sullivan's depiction of the world, every character harbors regrets over roads not taken. Some are stronger than others, and many are devoted to things more than people: One watches Fox News and says hateful things about President Barack Obama in order to be more like her well-to-do husband, adopting his politics "along with his interest in skiing and his love of the Miami Dolphins"; another hints at wanting more children just to be more like the trendy couples on the Upper East Side, as if to say: "We can afford to raise this many children at once in the most expensive city on earth." Does money ever buy any of them happiness? Not really, but it does score a few carats. A modern update of The Spoils of Poynton; elegant, assured, often moving and with a gentle moral lesson to boot. 400pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 06/01/2013 |
| Best-selling author J. Courtney Sullivan never was that little girl who dreamed of her wedding day--and she definitely never thought about having a sparkling diamond engagement ring perched on her hand. When she told a friend she was engaged, her friend's reply was, "Oh, I can't wait to see the piece of string around your finger." "I didn't want a wedding," Sullivan admits during a phone call from her Brooklyn apartment, which she shares with her fiancZ. "But now I'm having a very traditional wedding. There will be bridesmaids in taffeta." All the wedding talk is relevant for two reasons: First, her dazzling new novel, The Engagements, is an examination of marriage and the eternal siren call of diamonds. Second, Sullivan got engaged while she was writing the book, so she was researching her book and her nuptials at the same time. While her real-life wedding will take place this summer, Sullivan depicts weddings in many different times and places in her book--showing, as she describes it, how marriage has changed and stayed the same over the past 100 years. Paramedic James and his high-school sweetheart struggle to make ends meet and raise rambunctious boys in 1980s Boston. Parisian Delphine marries her best friend and business partner, only to leave him for a passionate affair with an American violinist. Evelyn and Gerald married in the 1920s, when both were grieving the death of Evelyn's first husband--Gerald's best friend. Woven throughout the book is the real-life story of Frances Gerety, a Philadelphia copywriter who coined the phrase "A diamond is forever" in the 1940s for De Beers, the South African company that dominates diamond mining. Gerety herself never married, but was a pioneer in the male-dominated advertising industry. In addition to writing one of the most memorable slogans in history, Gerety helped market the essentially meaningless "four C's" of diamonds--cut, color, clarity and carat weight--as the measurement that millions of brides use to make sure their gem is worthy. "I've never written a real person before," says Sullivan, who worked as a New York Times researcher before writing her first novel in 2009. "I liked Gerety so much. The book is done, and I still write with her picture hanging over my desk. I feel compelled to honor her. She was never married or had kids, so not a lot of people were around who knew her." The real-life copywriter who coined the slogan "Adiamond is forever" plays a key role in Sullivan's captivating book. Sullivan interviewed several of Gerety's co-workers, neighbors and friends. She spent two years trying to find the annual reports that Gerety's advertising firm submitted to De Beers, finally locating them packed away in boxes in Gerety's former home. (The search was well worth the effort. The excerpts Sullivan chose are funny and telling, like the one from a 1948 strategy paper: "We spread the word of diamonds worn by stars of screen and stage, by wives and daughters of political leaders, by any woman who can make the grocer's wife and the mechanic's sweetheart say, 'I wish I had what she has.'") "This book has the most research of any book I've ever written," Sullivan says. "I really thought about, 'Would this character have said this particular word in 1940?'" The character with whom Sullivan says she most closely identifies is Kate, a modern-day mom who is perfectly happy without getting married, thank you very much. Like Sullivan, Kate never dreamed about her own wedding. She struggles to be supportive when her cousin decides to marry his longtime partner and turns into a gay bridezilla obsessed with wedding-day weather reports and snagging the best photographer in town. Kate simply doesn't get the point. "Deep down, she... Review exceeds allowable length. 400pg. BOOKPAGE, c2013. |
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| Booklist | 05/01/2013 |
| A pioneering, single career woman writes what becomes a legendary slogan for a product she will never use. A husband and wife teeter on the edge of bankruptcy after she is mugged and her most precious piece of jewelry is stolen. A mother despairs over the end of her son's marriage as she recalls the precarious circumstances of her own. A married French woman becomes engaged to an American musician only to discover him cheating on her with her best friend. An overly practical woman nearly ruins her gay cousin's wedding. Inspired by the real-life story of Frances Gerety, a 1940s copywriter who penned the "A Diamond Is Forever" tagline for DeBeers, Sullivan riffs on the fragile state of marriage through a clever series of loosely connected vignettes. At the heart of each episode lies that sparkly symbol of romantic commitments, and what could have been a distractingly disjointed narrative style is give a sharp and crystalline coherence by virtue of Sullivan's sometimes bold, sometimes nuanced improvisation on the resonance of the diamond engagement ring. Haggas, Carol. 400p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013. |
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| Library Journal | 06/01/2013 |
| Mary Frances Gerety's greatest contribution to American romance, not to mention the jewelry industry, was the tagline she wrote for her employer, the N.W. Ayer advertising agency: "A diamond is forever." Under the umbrella of the real-life Frances's career, Sullivan weaves the stories of four couples bound together over decades by one opulent and iconic diamond engagement ring. We begin in the 1970s with the Pearsalls, reeling from their immature son's abandonment of his family for a flagrant affair. In the 1980s, EMT James and nurse Sheila struggle in a stagnant Boston economy while working low-income jobs. In the early aughts, a beautiful French woman abandons her husband as she is consumed by passion for a brilliant and much younger American violinist, to whom she becomes engaged--until his behavior sends her on a rampage. A decade later, Kate and Dan eschew marriage while they prepare for the same-sex nuptials of Kate's gay cousin. VERDICT Sullivan (Maine; Commencement) has written an intricate, beautifully timed novel, so delicious in its gradual unfolding that readers will want to reread it immediately to enjoy the fully realized ties. [See Prepub Alert, 12/16/12.]--. Beth Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI. 400p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 12/17/2012 |
| The author of the smart, thoughtful New York Times best sellers Maine and Commencement, which look to be standard women's fiction and turn out to be something more, Sullivan here paints interlocking portraits of characters variously embedded in the marriage question. Evelyn is content after having traded in one husband for another 40 years ago, for instance, while equally content Kate intends never to marry her partner of ten years. A big tour to Boston; Cape Cod; Chicago; Martha's Vineyard; New York; Philadelphia; Portland, ME (among other cities in Maine); Portland, OR; San Francisco; Seattle; Washington, DC; and more. 400p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2012. |
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9780307958716,dl.it[0].title
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