The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (12-Apr-2012) Paperback

Eugenides has written two of my all-time favorite books. Needless to say, my expectations were high for "The Marriage Plot", so I guess it should come as no surprise that I'm disappointed in this book. Firstly, the book is filled with obscure literary references, which did two things: made me feel unintelligent and made the writer seem pretentious...like he was trying too hard at making the book "intellectual". Also, while I was curious about what would happen to the characters, they were not nearly as interesting as the characters of Eugenides' previous works. The story itself was mildly interesting, but I found parts of the plot seemed contrived. "Virgin Suicides" and "Middlesex" were excellently written and filled with interesting characters. The plots were creative and engrossing. Not so with "The Marriage Plot". But I guess everyone has some misses in their career.

Phew! I finally finished the book!! Let me tell you, that is an accomplishment in itself! As much hype as this book is receiving, I felt it necessary to write a truthful, yet negative review for it.

I believe the author thought himself an intellectual, and decided to show off his knowledge, by name dropping every piece of literature he has ever read in this book. However, if you want to pull off a book about books, then you will need a much stronger plot, than this book provided. It is hard to get through each page without having to look things up, and I am a college educated, avid reader. Having stale characters who don't do much, or whose lives stay still, makes it that much harder to stay interested in continuing to read. He goes into extreme detail, but about the wrong things. He speaks about the college in great detail, about the yeast experiment, about the car, about the psychiatrist, about Mother Theresa, but what about the characters? How about focusing on moving the story forward, instead of on the setting so much?

Even the ending was a dissapointment. It has no closure and it is pretty predictable. I strongly believe in my 2 star rating.

The Marriage Plot is the title of Madeleine Hanna's honor thesis. She had a midsize portable library. Parents, Alton and Phyllida were in Providence for graduation. Alton Hanna could beat Madeleine on the tennis court and Phyllida could beat her with words. The Marriage Plot was an analysis of typical plots used in eighteenth and nineteenth century novels that functioned as the framework for a course that Madeleine took at Brown. She used the idea for her senior thesis.

After Madeleine embarked on her thesis, she began to hear of Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Deleuze, and Baudrillard. Semiotics was suggestive of a revolution. Madeleine decided that in the case of one Semiotics professor, his mid-life crisis consisted of leaving the English Department, not leaving his wife. Friends Olivia and Abby insisted that Madeleine go to a party with them the last night.

The title of the book is used in several ways during the course of this astonishingly good novel. The author's success, winning the Pulitzer Prize, is deserved.

Not sure what to headline this review. The story seems so real to me. A young woman's experiences being married to a bipolar man told with so much sincerity I felt it to be real. But I felt that way about Mr. Eugenides other novels that I've read. He has a gift of drawing the reader into his story.

Overall The Marriage Plot was an interesting read, It dragged as the author using his Madeline character, to showed off his English Lit skills slowing the plot development.The book took off in the second half. His use and description of a manic-depressive was fascinating.,

As the title suggests, Jeffery Eugenides' newest novel is about a marriage plot, to some extent. The reader follows the lives of Brown graduates of the 1980s and the years following their graduation as they enter the adult world, fall in love, find jobs, travel the world or generally wander aimlessly in search of meaning and purpose. In Eugenides' take on the marriage plot the characters don't appeal to the readers on any solid, complex emotional or intellectual level. As a personal fan of marriage plot expert Jane Austen, I was disheartened by the portrayal of the characters as people who I just did not like. Mitchell, Madeleine and Leonard are not explained to a depth that rivals Austen's both morally and emotionally.

Eugenides's unique writing guides the reader masterfully into this multi-levelled story of three young adults who go from university's oyster to the world; as always with him, there is no criticism, no suggestion of right or wrong, good or evil... You get the real sense, that things are what they are, plain and simple, even when they are complicated; and that for some things in a person's life, things that constitute our core theme, there is no choice.
How we go about with the 'choice' part is what makes our personal life story.

The Marriage Plot really captured the feelings I had as a university student in the seventies and eighties. Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard were so much like the students I knew and admired back then. All three were so engaged in their studies, and participated so fully in the intellectual life of the university, all while dealing with the problems of young adulthood. This is one of the best books I have read in a long time.

Great summer read; I enjoy Eugenedies' writing style and felt it was well suited to this novel. Though the ending is abrupt, it still works in the world he has created. Great work, and I have been encouraging friends to read it (even though they had already seen hat I wasn't able to put it down).

An epic look at families and relationships and young developing lives, as easily fascinating and engrossing as any of Jonathan Franzen's work. The title is misleading as it is about so much more than it suggests. Much more. Amongst many things, it looks in great detail at our western culture's perspective on gaining an English BA and that inevitable graduation, the tragedy and life-long results of Bipolar illness, finding love and your place in life in your 20's, volunteering to help the homeless and sick in Calcutta, India etc. All fascinating and very well written. I really loved it all. My only complaint is that title - what on earth were they thinking? One of the main themes is about the hidden circles in life, so why not (as an example) 'Mind the Circles' or 'Circumference When Young' or 'Drawing with a compass' etc. etc. I'm going to recommend this excellent book, but I'll first have to explain to people that I think the title is a bit dorky...

An epic look at families and relationships and young developing lives, as easily fascinating and engrossing as any of Jonathan Franzen's work. The title is misleading as it is about so much more than it suggests. Much more. Amongst many things, it looks in great detail at our western culture's perspective on gaining an English BA and that inevitable graduation, the tragedy and life-long results of Bipolar illness, finding love and your place in life in your 20's, volunteering to help the homeless and sick in Calcutta, India etc. All fascinating and very well written. I really loved it all. My only complaint is that title - what on earth were they thinking? One of the main themes is about the hidden circles in life, so why not (as an example) 'Mind the Circles' or 'Circumference When Young' or 'Drawing with a compass' etc. etc. I'm going to recommend this excellent book, but I'll first have to explain to people that I think the title is a bit dorky...

Eugenides descriptive language, use of sensory detail, and traditional form and themes make this book read like a big budget Hollywood movie. But the characters, the settings, the thoughts, all of it is so unoriginal as to be confounding and removes any literary aspect, if what you consider to be literature is a combination of artistic prowess combined with revelatory intelligence. Recklessly encouraging of hetero-patriarchy in literature and self indulgent in its aversion to relevance.

I thought I couldn't possibly like grownup fiction! This book has several characters that you can easily relate to if you were ever in college as a young adult and realized that perhaps your world view is not entirely accurate.

I found this novel quite boring. But this plot does illustrate how easily we can find ourselves in a situation and don't know how we got there. I seriously question some of the decisions she makes, but yet can't blame her. I think I only continued to read because some major elements of her situation really hit close to home.

Having, like so many others, loved Middlesex, I was eager for another Eugenides novel, despite its less than glowing reviews. Is it as marvelous as Middlesex? Not to my eyes, but it manages to be both thoughtful and entertaining, a page turner almost, and that is a good thing too.

This is the story of three Brown University students and the year following their graduation. The love triangle--Leonard and Mitchell are both in love with Madeleine--is loosely based on the marriage plot that is central to so many 19th century novels. Think Jane Austen or George Eliot.

Author Jeffrey Eugenides is a literary genius. His sentences are so poetic, I found myself rereading many--just to experience the language again. The three main characters do seem privileged--even the poor ones--because finding a job and functioning as adults isn't high on their radar. But the story of them entering the so-called real world resembles an old car sputtering down the road with the brakes being jammed on every minute or so. They learn much from each other. They grow up. And along the way, they experience great happiness and great sadness. An excellent read!

I enjoyed author's other books, but this one left me cold. It jumped around too much and left me confused at times.The author also repeated himself at times. I wish that I could recommend this book to others, but I cannot.
This was a "Book Club" selection and several other readers had the same response.

A good solid read
I liked the characters buy dome points during the novel the narrative became repetitive. That said Eugenides can write and his ability to describe how people work and feel in relationships is thought provoking.

The Marriage Plot is a well-written novel by Jeffrey Eugenides with believable but, unfortunately, mostly unlikeable characters. I enjoy Eugenides' prose, and found many passages in this book quite compelling and beautiful, but was left at the close with an overwhelming feeling of, "that's it?" Nothing of great importance seems to happen in the course of the novel and only one of the characters, the oft-put-upon Mitchell, seems to make much personal development and growth over the course of the 406 pages.

What I found most disappointing was that our female protagonist Madeleine is established as smart, driven, and beautiful and yet is completely at the mercy of her two male suitors, Leonard and Mitchell. When Madeleine can't have one, she pines for the other, and vice versa.

Eugenides has explained that this novel is a modern take on the Victorian "marriage plot." But just as the trope of the marriage plot itself has grown stale over time, this book does as well. Though this novel is a quick read and very realistically portrays young adults' passionate and fickle relationships, I would much more readily recommend Eugenides' "Middlesex."

Though mostly well done, "The Marriage Plot" doesn't quite reach the heights of "Middlesex" or "The Virgin Suicides." As a former English major, I enjoyed the literary references, but ultimately the plot felt juvenile. "The Marriage Plot" lacks the depth of his earlier books, and the characters were more annoying than likable. The play on the traditional "marriage plot" novel never quite worked in particularly interesting or clever way. The book was fine, but I would recommend other books ahead of this one.

I really enjoyed The Virgin Suicides and I loved Middlesex so I had high hopes for The Marriage Plot. I had a hard time finishing this book. I would just keep leaving off and kind of forgetting to get back into it. It took me longer than it usually would to finish a book. Ultimately I don't regret having read it, but I wouldn't put it in the same category as the others I've read by this author. It just didn't hold my interest, even though I enjoyed the story and the characters.

I was disappointed in the end because there really wasn't a significant end to the story. There wasn't enough closure between Leonard and Madeline. The author is a very detailed and descriptive writer which isn't a bad thing but it can take some time to get through the story. Overall it was a good book and I would recommend it to others that enjoy Jeffery Eugenides books as well as any recent college graduate. It really puts things into perspective as far as marriage.

Loved this book. The story grabs you from the beginning and keeps your attention by switching from one character's history to another, slowly revealing how the stories relate--each filling in gaps left by the others. In some ways it feels like you're reading a mystery, but it's actually a story about growing up and finding your identity. This isn't a light reading "boy meets girl" story--it's full of esoteric literary references, philosophical and religious exploration, and even has a helping of scientific research well-explained as part of the plot--but that made me love it even more. Reliving the characters' experiences taking classes in the early 80s at Brown gave me that same feeling I used to get after doing a ton of schoolwork, where it all finally clicks and you realized it was worth the effort--but without any of the effort at all.

The book is easy to follow, written well, and leaves you thinking about it whenever you put it down. I read this because it's the assigned book for my club book with a bunch of 20-something recent college grads, and I think we're actually going to discuss the book (a lot) this time.

Pick this one up - you won't regret it.

Like Julian Barnes' Sense of an Ending, but not as bad, this author should have delivered, but I am too old to be intrigued by teen angst, even teen-angst set when I was a teenager, especially when, having dragged oneself through, there is no redemptive sense of wanting to understand the whole thing. It was all a bit been there done that.

This has nowhere near the depth and interest of Eugenides really great novel, MIDDLESEX. Still, it's a lot of fun -- a comedy, even though it takes up some awful problems including severe mental illness. It has lots of in-jokes for English majors and Modern Language Association types.

It's difficult to find anything excruciatingly wrong with this novel; the plot is decent, the characters are entertaining, and the writing is strong. But that's it. This is not the most memorable book of your lifetime, or your year. A story about recent college graduates in 1982, it follows 3 grads from Brown and the ensuring love triangle. It's a plot that feels safe, overdone- which isn't to say it's bad, but it misses the point of novel to try something new. Read it to pass the time, but don't expect to have your horizons broadened by the tried and true.

Well written, great vocabulary and references, though I didn't so much care for the ending, but perhaps that's because I felt like I was reading about my own College love, which ended somewhat similarly. Spot on with the way you feel at 21, nostalgic to read at 31.

The Marriage Plot (2011) Jeffery Eugenides

The Marriage Plot rings true. It is an authentic story about love and attraction, well written and wonderfully plotted. What is "The marriage plot?" Well we all know it - it is that story where the girl meets a boy and falls head-over-heels in love but the boy is not quite right in some way, and there is trouble, and yet - the girl is determined and the boy manages to convince himself that love can find a way, and they run away together but it seems like everything and everybody is working against them to thwart love; and we the reader can see that, and we can see that the girl would be much better off with the other, the not quite as exciting boy who loves her, too, and is a better fit for the girl but she can't see that - she is lost in the fog of her Frog Prince fantasy.

This is a true story. It is my story. It is also, I can't help myself from thinking, inspired by the tragic life and death of David Foster Wallace, which of course, Eugenides denies. The tale is of three Brown University students, class of 1982, and their ensuing love triangle. The girl, Madeline, falls for an exciting, brilliant, scruffy, good-looking fellow student, who is manic/depressive but medicated, and so seems like he's fine - just "in love" with her. But the boy/man, Leonard, is pulled down by his past and also doesn't like the sluggish side effects of the medication, and so decides to manage his "disease" himself. All the while the other boy, Mitchell, also brilliant but not as exciting or good looking as Leonard, pines for Madeline and passes the oh-so-long time exploring his inner self and spirituality - trying not to just wait and dissolve from his missed opportunities and damaged heart.

As I read this I thought of how Eugenides must have so enjoyed writing it. You can just tell he had fun with it. Underlying all the twists and turns and tragedies there is humor and an ironic smile. I highly recommend this book.

Our book club read this book. I really enjoyed it although the beginning is a bit tedious. The author presents 3 strong characters, recent graduates of Brown University, and how their lives intersect. I thought the characters were very well defined and the setting seemed very true to what Brown graduates in the 80's might be doing. I especially liked Mitchell and his religious quest that took him to India. I felt that the author was writing a semi autobiographical novel, having been a Brown graduate. It felt very true. Not everyone in our Book Club enjoyed the book. But I did!

While I liked the sentence structure and writing of Mr. Eugenides, I found that I liked the parts where Mitchel was traveling and would have liked that as a separate novel. I found too much repetition in retelling what had already happened previously in the novel. I also thought that Madeline's character and that of her parents were contrived at best. I liked his book "Middlesex" better.

Jeffrey Eugenides' most recent novel seems like an odd step back in terms of topic material considering the risks he has taken in the past. Writing about three intelligent post-grads from Brown in a love triangle seems an easy task for Eugenides (who himself attended Brown). What elevates the novel, in my opinion, is Eugenides' effort to reintroduce the concept of the marriage plot (a commonly used romantic trope that made quite a splash in Victorian fiction) to modern American fiction, a task he completes swiftly and with ease. However, the novel feels a little Gossip Girl in the context of contemporary American writing and media: He loves her, she loves someone else, and "someone else" doesn't really know how to care. We get it. Stories about lovelorn young people often seem like they belong on the CW11, no matter where these lovelorn young adults went to college.

However, with that out of the way, I did really enjoy The Marriage Plot. It's a quick read that only slows down when Eugenides provides detail about one of the three main character's post-grad field of study (Victorian literature, biology, and religious studies). Other than providing his audience with a blinking neon arrow to highlight where Eugenides derived his concept and title from, these academic references do nothing but make Eugenides seem as though he is working a tad too hard.

The characters are likeable and sweetly lost as to who they want to be, what they want to do, and who they want to be with. If it weren't for the mental illness that one of the main characters deals with, it would seem light reading fare. The insertion of mental illness grounds the characters, giving them depth. Watching the characters handle depression (both those who suffer from it and those who are in a relationship with a sufferer) made me ultimately very sympathetic to the plights of these young men and women.

Overall, I'd call it an elevated beach read.

Marriage Plod. It's never good when you start skimming the first pages of a novel. But, there are lots of skippable spots when Eugenides regurgitates the Brown syllabus of the early 80's in Derrida deconstruction detail. Relevance was in then. The characters are a mangled menage a trois struggling with religion, manic depression, and feminism while at Brown. The triangle confronts difficult life choices after college with some compassion and strength of character. I did like the ending.

Carol Colitti Levine The Side Trek

Perhaps I'm biased because I graduated from Brown, but I found myself laughing hysterically at his take on smart but lost college students. I knew many Madeline and Leonard characters. I wish I knew more Mitchell-types.

I can see how this would not be the most accessible book for an average reader. Eugenides goes into great depth (and amazing wit) about post modern and religious theory books. If you have not read these books then a huge portion of Eugenides's satire and the main characters' guidance may be lost.

In the end this is still a great story about becoming an adult. Or becoming lost in the process.

A huge fan of Eugenides, I found myself dissappointed with this work. I found the characters to be annoying, even if purposefully so, and the plot was transparent from the first 30 pages (which, in other books, would have been fine but in this case, we are left knowing that the book just isn't going to get any better). I found myself speed reading through chapters just to make the story move along faster, and because I was sick of hearing the characters talking. Stick with Middlesex if you are looking for a great read, and Eugenides' best book to date.

After being spell-bound and engrossed by Middlesex I couldn't wait to read The Marriage Plot. However, I was deeply disappointed. I found it an uncomfortable read, heavy on religious philophosy which is not entertaining, (ok Jeff we can see how smart you are), the love triangle was just depressing and boring, and there was no excitement in the book whatsoever. I kept waiting for the story to start, for something to happen. The poverty of India didn't help matters either. The whole thing was one big depressing read. I'll be taking a good long look at Eugenides next book before spending my money on it.