The Marriage Plot: A Novel Paperback – September 4, 2012

The Marriage Plot seems like a fairly "normal" story for Eugenides compared to Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. Unlike Middlesex's huge scope of years and locations, Marriage Plot focuses on a few years in the lives of Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell as they graduate college and begin to discover who they are.Eugenides seems to recognize what a pivotal time in life those first few years after college are. The decisions we make about relationships, careers, whether to go to graduate school, or whether to just roam for a while, all have lasting implications. The average twenty-one or twenty-two year old coming out of college might be self-centered and immature but these are still decisions that will affect their lives for years. Can they be undone later? Sure. But not without consequences. Eugenides shows us, compellingly, how little we know about ourselves at this time in our lives, and how much we have to think about.The novel begins on graduation day. Madeleine Hanna wakes up to her doorbell ringing, her parents outside. She's hung over, wearing a stained, borrowed dress from the night before, and feels like her life is falling apart because she broke up with her boyfriend, Leonard, and has no idea where she's going to live or whether she got into a graduate program. Her parents know none of this of course. Madeleine has a contentious relationship with her friend Mitchell, who is in love with her but who feels she's treated him badly. Mitchell is off to spend the year after graduation traveling through Europe and India with a friend. He's lined up a sort-of research job with a professor but otherwise has no specific timeline or plans for the future.Leonard is someone we'll get to know later in the book, so for now all we know is that his relationship with Madeleine has ended and she's devastated. Eugenides will later fill in all the details of how these three characters got to know each other, and what they come to mean to each other. He shows us the same events, during college and after graduation, from each character's perspective.The characters are very real, and very sympathetic, even though they're far from perfect. Madeleine is beautiful, privileged, and comes from a happy supportive family. She's the "normal" girl, the one you probably envied in school. I know I did. She's smart, but not off-puttingly smart, and she's got all the advantages. But at the same time, her life is a mess. Mitchell is the smart guy - you know he'll do okay whatever he decides to do, but he's also the kid that got picked on, who doesn't have the confidence to go after the pretty girl. He's the quintessential "nice guy", the friend. Leonard is the guy you fall for in college - he's brainy but also an independent thinker. He's kind of a rebel. He's good-looking and confident. If Mitchell is the guy who cares too much what women think of him, Leonard is the guy who doesn't care at all. And of course that means he gets the girl.If you think these characters sound superficial, you'd be wrong. Eugenides develops each one fully. By showing us each of their perspectives, we see how little the three characters understand each other. Each of them is trying to get by, the best they can.As a former English major, I enjoyed Eugenides' attention to literature and how that influences these characters. His descriptions of books can be overwhelming at times, but when you're a college student, or a post-grad, what you study and how you study are important. The characters judge each other constantly by what they read and how they talk about what they read. This book is almost an homage to different kinds of literature. The title, for example, refers to a class Madeleine takes on Victorian literature and "the marriage plot", a subject that later becomes her thesis. The marriage plot refers to works by authors such as Jane Austen, and the importance marriage plays in Victorian life. The topic is contrasted with later works of literature, such as Middlemarch, and the reality of modern-day marriage. Madeleine's instructor notes that the marriage plot as a story device would be almost irrelevant today, because people can divorce and remarry so easily.I think everyone will read this book a little differently depending on their age. For me it brought to mind the decisions that could have been made when I graduated college, and that pivotal, exciting but so-very-sad graduation day. That was a day I knew a lot of happy times were ending. I had everything going for me -but still it felt like the one time in my life that was relatively care-free was ending.Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard may seem like they have it easy. They don't. There are no right or wrong decisions, there's just the path you go down and the one you don't. But we don't get to go back and do that time in our lives over.For more reviews visit The Book Stop at [...].

Madeline is the English major daughter of a Conservative small college president in Maryland. Mitchell, a sprititual Greek American from the Detroit area. Leonard is a brilliant scientific mind from a broken home in Portland, Oregon. The relationship between these three, primarily between the men and Madeline as the center point is the story, during their four years at Brown, and the year after they graduate, is the story.The story is clearly well researched and filled with details and the character’s thoughts on subjects from classics of literature, to religious and philosphical thought, to scientific research of the early 1980s. Eugenides doesn’t bury us in it just to show off his effort but he makes his storylines come alive with authenticity.It also describes in the era’s terms one person’s struggles with manic depression, now more commonly referred to a bi-polar disorder. Because Eugenides has also created a novel of class differences between the characters I empathized with the struggles while acknowledging how different the experiences are for those afflicted between someone of privilege vs someone without. You also see how it effects others close to those afflicted, and again how their own class status can affect that reaction.Regarding the writing style, what I found most interesting is how probably 3/4 of the novel is told as flashback with some backstory narrative. Something most writing classes would say will not work, it can cause a loss in tension, but a masterful writer like Eugenides can pull it off. We get a few pages of present time, then the novel shifts to the days, weeks, sometimes months or years that preceeded it to get us to that point. As the novel is told from three points of view, those of the three main characters, we consequently are introduced to each character in pieces throughout the novel. In the beginning Maddeline is the main character, and while the backstory is parsed out till the end of the book (eg, its in the last pages that we learn something about Maddeline’s high school friends and something about her deeper personality) we really only learn about Leonard and Mitchell well into the novel. But by the end of the novel things have shifted. Mitchell has become the main character and its his growth we really see. He is in control.The story was enjoyable and interesting, but what really made with a great read for me was the writing and style. Not Eugindes’s best work, but for such a simple story, at its core its just a story of a love triangle involving three white kids at Brown, it was still some of the best writing I’ve read. Probably deserving of slightly higher than 4 stars.

This is the first novel by Jeffrey Eugenides that I have read and I only picked it up as part of an online book club. I can honestly say that I would never have read it if I hadn’t been a part of the group and I don’t think I would have missed the read.Whilst there is some lovely imagery and writing I felt like the book was beating me around the head about how little I know about English Literature. There was lots of references to authors that are very well known – Austen, James, Tolstoy etc. Some of which I have read and others that are on my ‘To Read’ list but others still that I had never heard of before. There was also a lot about Semiotics in the first half of the book which left me feeling stupid as I had no idea what this was, but never fear, I certainly do now!My real problem with this book was that I just didn’t care what happened to the 3 main characters.• Madeleine – Rich, pretty, smart but so one dimensional• Leonard – Had the littlest written from his point of view but I found him unlikeable• Mitchell – He went through the most growth as a character but whined a lotI also disliked the format of the book. There were only 6 chapters, the first being the longest at about 2.5 hours reading time. Now I usually like reading to the end of the chapter before breaking off from the story line for whatever reason, but I couldn't do that with this book and it annoyed me as I feel there was plenty of opportunity to put in regularly structured breaks.Overall, this book is about Love. Each of the main characters think at one stage or another that they are in love but in the end it is self-gratification, possessiveness, neediness etc. Whilst the book made me think I didn’t really enjoy it and would not expect to ever read it again.