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Loading... The Marriage Plot: A Novel (original 2011; edition 2011)by Jeffrey Eugenides
Work detailsThe Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)
 LucindaLibri | May 15, 2013 |  Great fun, well written. Also the best depiction of mental illness/bipolar disorder that I've ever read (much better than some non-fictional accounts; just goes to show that art sometimes illuminates and explains better than journalism or "reality") (  ) lxydis | May 11, 2013 | While I liked Middlesex quite a bit, I'm more mixed on The Marriage Plot. This book is peppered with references to literature, literary theory, and academia. I can see how that would be a turnoff for some readers, but I found it pretty well done and consistent with the Ivy League intellectualism of the main characters. What was a bit of a turnoff for me was the narcissism, elitism, and general unlikability of all three of our heroes. They are all, of course, meticulously developed, well-written, and sympathetic, but spending an entire book with them takes a lot of energy. [full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-marriage-plot-by-jeffrey-eugenides.htm... ] ( ) kristykay22 | May 1, 2013 | I'm 4 CDs in on the audiobook and I'm finally giving up. I feel like I'm in a room full of elitist snobs, unable to keep up my end of the conversation. Maybe if I had a Master's degree in Philosophy or English lit, the characters and story would be more relatable. Not at all what I was expecting. Meh. And I'm not sure what shelf to put this on. It's not really "to read" but I didn't finish it, so it shouldn't be on the "read" shelf either. I think Goodreads needs a fourth option "Unfinished" just for books like this one. (  ) Cather00 | Apr 27, 2013 | A good yarn, but a tiny detail threw me: at one point a character lists a bunch of 80s metal bands, and ends with "Motordeath". Who? Did he mean Motörhead? carlohamalainen | Apr 23, 2013 |
 The novel isn’t really concerned with matrimony or the stories we tell about it, and the title, the opening glance at Madeleine’s library and the intermittent talk of books come across as attempts to impose an exogenous meaning. The novel isn’t really about love either, except secondarily. It’s about what Eugenides’s books are always about, no matter how they differ: the drama of coming of age. No one’s more adept at channeling teenage angst than Jeffrey Eugenides. Not even J. D. Salinger.
 Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0374203059, Hardcover)Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: Even among authors, Jeffrey Eugenides possesses a rare talent for being able to inhabit his characters. In The Marriage Plot, his third novel and first in ten years (following the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex), Eugenides describes a year or so in the lives of three college seniors at Brown in the early 80s. There is Madeleine, a self-described “incurable romantic” who is slightly embarrassed at being so normal. There is Leonard, a brilliant, temperamental student from the Pacific Northwest. And completing the triangle is Mitchell, a Religious Studies major from Eugenides’ own Detroit. What follows is a book delivered in sincere and genuine prose, tracing the end of the students’ college days and continuing into those first, tentative steps toward true adulthood. This is a thoughtful and at times disarming novel about life, love, and discovery, set during a time when so much of life seems filled with deep portent. --Chris Schluep(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:59:07 -0500) Madeleine Hanna was the dutiful English major who didn't get the memo. While everyone else in the early 1980s was reading Derrida, she was happily absorbed with Jane Austen and George Eliot: purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. Madeleine was the girl who dressed a little too nicely for the taste of her more Bohemian friends, the perfect girlfriend whose college love life, despite her good looks, hadn't lived up to expectations. But now, in the spring of her senior year, Madeleine has enrolled in a semiotics course "to see what all the fuss is about," and, for reasons that have nothing to do with school, life and literature will never be the same. Not after she falls in love with Leonard Morton--charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Oregon boy--who is possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy and introduces her to the ecstasies of immediate experience.… (more) (summary from another edition) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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If this book is the only evidence, I would say the answer is: "Yes, they are dead. No it can't be done." Which is my way of saying that the book didn't live up to the blurb on the back cover . . . at least for me. I don't necessarily believe that great love stories are dead or that a new story can't be written . . . just that this book didn't do it.
Even the parts that attempt to be as witty as Jane Austen, read to me like the author was saying "look how witty I am," which I never feel when I read Austen.
I'm also not sure how most people can even understand most of what happens in the first third of the book. I actually graduated from college around the time setting of the book, and I read enough women's studies and literary theory to "get" the context. Still, I didn't find all the name/theory-dropping to be either necessary or interesting.
There were sections of the book that I enjoyed. I also thought it was an effective "treatment" of mental illness. But I really don't understand why setting the book 30 years ago was in any way a good choice . . . though I suspect there may be a bit of autobiography going on . . .
I read this book for a book group that meets soon to discuss it. I will be interested to hear what my book friends have to say about it. (