Coinage of Commitment

When I received the “Coinage of Commitment” by R. Costelloe, I first read the media release accompanying it. The book was described as a rare love story, written by a man to explore the zenith of true love. Needless to say, I was really excited -- good love stories are few and far-between and preciously few of them have been written by male authors.

“Coinage of Commitment” is a story of two young people, Wayne and Nancy, who met and fell in love in spite of all of the nearly insurmountable obstacles of their class, upbringing and finances. The book follows a well-established pattern: boy sees girl, boy falls for the girl; boy thinks girl is out of his league, girl falls for the boy and a passionate, supposedly romantic relationship follows. This particular book takes it a step further. Boy loses girl, boy marries the other girl, boy meets the first girl again and is torn between her and his wife. Will he make the right choice? What is the right choice?

As much as I tried to like this book, I couldn’t warm up to it at all. What the author obviously perceives as romantic lovers’ talk sounds like interrogation to me. My ideas of exalted love do not include jumping into bed on the first or second date. Being a kept man would not make any of the men I’ve ever met happy, and if somebody who meant the world to me was supposedly dead and reappeared in my life decades later, you can bet I would not entertain any ideas of leaving my husband for that person. The only torn feelings I could imagine having would be between scratching his eyes out for putting me through so much mental anguish or simply turning and walking away. If the plot itself was enough to make me feel quite lukewarm towards the book, it was several of the scenes and the stiff, overly wordy writing that confirmed my opinion of the book. Take for instance this paragraph, describing a scene at a party and starring Wayne and his nearly saintly wife Ingrid:

“Ingrid was particularly beautiful that night, elaborately made up and glowing with a new hairdo that she had – for once – let a beauty parlor prepare. After they arrived at the party – it was a large and crowded affair – they had become separated, a not unusual occurrence. He had gone to one of the bathrooms, reaching it down a narrow hall that also led to the downstairs bedrooms. When he came out and turned to the right, Ingrid was coming down the hall, sashaying toward him, not twenty feet away. Her eyes were wide and intent, twinkling an undefined excitement, as though anticipating what had not yet occurred to him. But then the idea did come to him, and the audacity of it shivered through him delectably, as did the certainty of her perfect if restrained willingness. She took the and he extended and he drew her into the bathroom. Later he would remember her eyes, never leaving his, so wide and luminous, the chief expression between them during the entire, silent transaction. Had he really conjured that remarkable image of her perched on the toilet seat lid, her dress bunched up to her waist, her legs wrapped around him? Or had it actually been her idea, reflected in her eyes, broadcast by her stride, handed directly to him by her amazingly timed arrival?”

So much telling, so little showing; such clichés, stiff writing and unnecessary information (what difference does it make if he turned left or right, and why mention the downstairs bedroom if he did not have the common sense to take his wife there anyhow?), characters that I could not relate to or feel sympathetic with; unnecessary time shifts, particularly in the first third of the book… this was a story that just could not draw me in.

The press release also stated that the “Coinage of Commitment” was written as a result of Mr. Costelloe reading a single paragraph at the end of an Anita Shreve’s novel that enraged him on behalf of American women who, according to him, deserved better. My response to that? Give me Anita Shreve any day.

Coinage of Commitment
R. Costelloe
Saga Books (2007)
ISBN 9781894936835
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (10/07)