THE ENGAGEMENTS by J. Courtney Sullivan

Frances Gerety, working as a copywriter for the Ayers ad agency in the 1940s, came up with the grammatically incorrect slogan “A Diamond Is Forever” and helped initiate the perception that every bride must have a diamond ring.  Gerety, however, was a career woman who never married and found it challenging just to join a country club without a husband.  In this novel she is a pioneer and a procrastinator who does her best work under pressure, and her story is interwoven with the stories of several fictional brides in different time slices.  Evelyn is mournfully preparing lunch for her 40-something son who has abandoned his wife and children.  Delphine has left her husband in France for an American violin virtuoso.  James is a paramedic, working on Christmas Eve and struggling to make ends meet.  Kate and her partner Dan have never married, but their daughter will be serving as flower girl for her cousin’s gay marriage.  All of the stories are nice but certainly not gripping.  They do have a thread that links them together loosely, and most of them also involve parental disapproval of a child’s chosen spouse.  The biggest source of anxiety in any of them, though, is Kate’s misplacement of one of the groom’s rings.  This novel really just doesn’t have a plot.  Cohesive it is not.  Yes, the characters are believable and sympathetic but not particularly compelling.  Also, it is not exactly a ringing (pun intended) endorsement of marriage or of having children who may ultimately break your heart.