Commitment

Rating:
Summary: An absorbing read!
Review: Carol Simon is born into a wealthy Jewish family who suffers total loss of their money and home in the Wall St. crash of 1929.Her father gives in to despair and suicides, leaving Carol with a lifelong horror of guns.Her selfish,uncaring mother emotionally blackmails her into a teenage wedding to a minor hoodlum who is gunned to death, leaving Carol, who was also shot, a widow while still a girl. She falls in with a group of stage struck young people with whom she bonds closely and also meets Sharon, who is to remain a lifelong friend.After a disastrous love affair with Mat, another of the group, Carol and Sharon spend a year in Paris where they study at the Sorbonne and Carol meets Seth, an aspiring writer whom she'd met briefly in New York.Carol is determined to become an architect despite the setbacks and put-downs she encounters along the way. She succeeds at this and the story continues with the ups and downs of Carol, Seth and the rest of their family.I found this to be one of those big comfy reads where I found myself totally involved with the characters and felt part of a family to the extent that I wanted to give some of them a good push(like you do with family) and tell them to get on with it and stop whining!