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    The Marriage Plot
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    The Marriage Plot
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    The Marriage Plot
    Ebook562 pages8 hours

    The Marriage Plot

    By Jeffrey Eugenides

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 3, 2011
    ISBN9780007441273
    Unavailable
    The Marriage Plot
    Author

    Jeffrey Eugenides

    Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of three novels. His first, The Virgin Suicides (1993), is now considered a modern classic. Middlesex (2002) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and both Middlesex and The Marriage Plot (2011) were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Fresh Complaint, a collection of short stories, was published in 2017. He is a member both of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and The American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

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    Reviews for The Marriage Plot

    3.5/5

    1,667 ratings170 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is definitely not the best novel Mr. Eugenides has written. It's a love triangle involving college students....a good enough story, but nothing nearly as captivating as his earlier subjects. And I found that the author went into too much detail about the contents of the courses the students were taking...if I want to understand deconstructionism, I'll find a nonfiction book to explain it to me.
    • 3/5
      Four stars for the writing, two stars for the characters so overall three stars.
    • 3/5
      Although there were some great passages, the novel as a whole fails for me. Over-written and under edited.
    • 3/5
      I would have liked a little bit more about literature and a little bit less about the guy with a mental illnes.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this more than I expected to based on my inability to even finish Middlesex. The three characters really annoyed me but the story line was fantastically real. I wasn't a fan of how pretentious the characters were especially in regards to how intellectual they found themselves to be and I wonder how much of it was character development and how much of it was Eugenides own voice. Regardless I can't deny that he is a wonderful author and his writing style and plot development are beautiful. This book has convinced me to give Middlesex another shot.
    • 2/5
      All I can say is I'm not sure why everyone loved this book.
    • 1/5
      Ugh... why? Jeffrey Eugenides' first book was about five suicidal sisters. His second was a Bildungsroman about an intersex person. His third is about... college grads trying to decide what to do with their lives. Gah, if I wanted a book like that, I'd write my memoirs. (And be completely unsurprised when no one read them.)

      First we meet Madeleine, an English major at Brown University. She is a bit of an oddity because a) she likes to read and b) she likes "unfashionable" authors like Austen, James, Eliot, and Wharton. She is very attractive, as evidenced by the men around her finding her attractive. Eugenides spends pages and pages trying to convince you how special Madeleine is. (One sign is that she uses looseleaf tea instead of teabags.) The resulting portrait is of a pretty, sweet, naive, and dull young woman.

      Despite being graced with more personality, the two male leads are not much better. Leonard is a budding scientist struggling with bipolar disorder. While his disease certainly makes him more sympathetic, it is no excuse for the way he treats Madeleine. (Madeleine pretty much puts up with his emotional abuse because the sex is so great.) Mitchell, a religious studies major, is a typical Nice Guy - the guy who becomes friends with you because he wants to fuck you. Unlike most love triangles, there is no reason to "ship" one pairing over the other.

      The worst offense The Marriage Plot commits is that it has absolutely nothing new to say. I really hope that Eugenides didn't think he was being transgressive with the ending, where Madeleine rejects both suitors and goes to graduate school. The only way that ending would have been revolutionary is if it had happened in The Twilight Saga.
    • 3/5
      The book feels pretentiously literary like its characters : something I'd have to read for school rather than for pleasure. In any case it didn't speak to me so I skipped to the end.
    • 1/5
      This book made me feel stupid. The author kept making references to things that I had no idea what he was talking about. Oh well. Why would I want to google everything, or look in the dictionary every five minutes? Not enjoyable to me.
    • 2/5
      Yet another highly praised book that I just didn't like. The characters weren't people I had any empathy for or cared about in any way, shape or form. Every time I started getting into the storytelling itself the author would switch locations and take the story off on another tangent.
      A very unenjoyable read and another head scratcher as regards to what makes critics praise books that to me seem average or below average.
    • 3/5
      I liked the first third of Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot," but then, I don't know what happened as the story sort of went off the rails and became fairly boring for the remainder of the book.The novel tells the story of Madeleine Hanna and the love triangle she is unconvincingly involved in with hunky yet mentally ill Leonard and the grating, religious character of Mitchell. I very much liked the story when it was focused on the college years -- perhaps because it was reflective of my own college experience in some ways. However, once the trio of characters graduates, the story just grinds along and doesn't really go anywhere. I've liked other books by Eugenides, so I was surprised I didn't enjoy this one more.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable but not as good as Middlesex.
    • 4/5
      This was a really enjoyable read. I liked the premise, I found the characters engaging, I was interested in their experiences, and I enjoyed Eugenides' intelligence as a writer. Set in the days leading up to college graduation and the months afterwards, it follows three college friends as they work out who they are. Madeleine is the centre of the story, Leonard and Mitchell the two men she loves and is loved by. It takes in New Jersey, the Eastern Seaboard, New York, Paris, Greece, India and Monaco. It made me look back on the end of university as I experienced it, how enormous life seemed to be, and how things didn't turn out the way I thought they would.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed Middlesex much more than this novel. However, it was a good read and made one think about one's own relationships with others and one's own place in the world. I would have liked it to have tied in more directly with her thesis and reason for the title.
    • 5/5
      This book really resonated me for several reasons: there's a generational proximity which reminded me of my own youth, a common love of literature, philosophy and religion and an experience of mental illness which allowed me to empathize with Madeleine while allowing me to take a step back and see the illness and its ravages.While I'm usually a slow reader, I devoured this book. I did not always enjoy the characters (Madeleine a little too spoiled; Leonard a little too smart; Mitchell a little too self-effacing), it is these faults that make them human as they move through the challenging period between graduation and finding one's place in the world.Marriage seems like a tenuous thread to really explore the heart of matter: mental illness, described with compassion, grit and realism.It's definitely a book I would recommend, and one that is immensely readable.
    • 4/5
      Smart people reading books, finding themselves, and falling in love in the Ivy League of the early '80s. This is a premise that could horribly flat if not for the deftness of Eugenides' plot and his meticulously constructed love triangle. You can enjoy this as a page-turning postmodern take on Austen and Eliot, or you can try to construct some kind of deeper archetypal interpretation: is the rivalry between Mitchell and Leonard a metaphor for the competing interests of science and religion? Is the bandanna-wearing Leonard a stand-in for the late, great David Foster Wallace (although Eugenides makes sure to point out that Leonard hates tennis)? Eugenides adds enough fly-on-the wall detail to make The Marriage Plot believable, even with its fantastic sheen and exotic locales (Calcutta, Monte Carlo). Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Eugenides has a wonderful way with words, but I was annoyed by all 3 main characters, and most of the supporting ones. The descriptions of the psych unit and the homeless shelter in India was fascinating, but Maddy really irked me with her desire to save anyone but herself until the very end of the book.

      Also feel like it was overhyped. Kind of like Slumdog Millionaire once I got around to seeing it.
    • 3/5
      After reading Middlesex, I had high hopes for this one. Maybe too high. I didn't find much likable about any of the characters and the only reason I stuck with it is that I expected it to be brilliant. It just wasn't. I'm even the same age as the protagonists (graduated in 1982) and I still couldn't relate to them.
    • 2/5
      This was terrible. I tried to read the whole thing because I LOVED [Middlesex] by the same author and this is on the 1001 books to read before you die list. But it was just awful. Horribly pretentious, self-involved, messed up characters, and a boring and predictable plot/character interactions.I skimmed the last 50 pages and it just got more ridiculous. Isn't it surprising when an author can write one book you love and one you think is awful?
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book but I also struggled with it. The first part reads like a literature class which was a little difficult for me to follow. I kept wondering if I had reverted back to my undergrad days. I kept slugging through because this is supposed to be one of the best books of 2011 and I wanted to see what all the hype was about.

      The book picked up a little and then slowed down ( at least for me) and it took me a lot longer to finish it because some parts were tedius to read. I enjoyed most of the characters but fount Mitchell's narrative to be rather slow. I found Madeline a little infuriating, but I'm sure I was too when I was 21.

      Overall, I enjoyed the book but I also have to say that I am glad to be done with it.
    • 3/5
      A lot more "normal" than The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. The absence of strangeness and epicness made this book the least enjoyable for me.
    • 4/5
      I love Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex is one of my top top top books ever and this was not that... but it was still a great book. Would I ever want to read it again? Hmmmm, maybe this is more of a 3.5 but anyway, it's still a big, thick, luscious tome with fully developed characters and so much detail that reading it feels like watching a movie with every scene available for pause during playback. I loved being inside this work and have no idea how Eugenides manages to get inside the head, heart and body of a college-aged female with such immersion. He's amazing.
    • 2/5
      The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides Oxford University Press meets Mills and Boon meets Black Nite Crash.

      What was all the fuss about?
    • 3/5
      During the first half, this book felt as though Eugenides had left his oodles of research done for "Middlesex", read some of Donna Tartt's "The Secret History", some Bret Easton Ellis and really dissected and mulled over Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom".

      The second half had more flesh, yet also more pulp.

      At the same time, this book is very well-written, and by that I mean the author has a firm grip on rhythm, colouring his language and keeping parts suspenseful. Friendships and some love feels real.

      On the other hand, I'll say it's a lot of research into biology - cells - which feels a bit asperger-ish. We get the metaphors; I think. It could have used a firmer grip and more editing.

      Kudos to Eugenides for name-dropping "The Paris Review".
    • 4/5
      In the spring of 1982, Madeline (Maddie) Hanna is about to graduate from Brown University with a degree in English literature. She has been especially drawn to the writing of Austen, Eliot, and James, with their novels based on ?marriage plots.? Also graduating is Mitchell Grammaticus, a religious studies major who plans to seek enlightenment?or at least a short-term research job?in India. Maddie and Mitchell dated briefly as sophomores, but she broke up with him because he wanted a more serious relationship than she was ready for. Mitchell still pines after Maddie, while she is in love with Leonard Bankhead, a brilliant but seriously disturbed physics major who is also graduating and with whom Maddie had an intense fling during the winter of their senior year.?The Marriage Plot? traces the lives of Maddie, Mitchell, and Leonard through the years just following graduation. The books addresses big themes, one of which is the difficulty of finding one?s way in the world, even for young adults who, with a degree from an Ivy League university, would appear to have it made. Mitchell tries?and fails spectacularly?to find grace while serving at Mother Teresa?s Missionary of Charity in Calcutta. Maddie tries, and fails, to play the role of supportive wife to Leonard, who in turn struggles and fails to capitalize on his scientific genius while coping with manic-depression.Another theme of ?The Marriage Plot? is the parallel between religiosity and insanity. In a particularly explicit example of this, while traveling in India, Mitchell meets a devotee of the spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who tells him, matter-of-factly, that ?[p]eople levitate.? Much later, after Mitchell has returned to the US and has run into Maddie and Leonard at a party in New York, Leonard, now seriously depressed, describes to Mitchell an experience he had in Europe on his honeymoon, where he ?was looking up into the starry sky when suddenly he had the feeling that he could lift off into space, if he wanted to, [and] as soon as the idea occurred to him, it . . . happened: he was suddenly in space, floating past the planet Saturn.?A third theme involves perspectives on class and wealth. Eugenides depicts the contrast between upper and working class Americans (Maddie and Mitchell), and then puts it in context by depicting the difference between Mitchell and the extremely poor residents of Calcutta he meets.?The Marriage Plot? is very well written: Maddie is certainly channeling Eugenides when she says that ?a writer should work harder writing a book than [the reader does} reading it.? But in the end, ?The Marriage Plot? is not wholly satisfying. In contrast to ?Middlesex,? which had an expansive story spanning decades and history that impacted millions of people, ?The Marriage Plot? at times feel claustrophobic. Perhaps that?s because the three main characters are each experiencing their own forms of claustrophobia: Mitchell unable to escape the bounds of his corporeality to achieve the enlightenment he so seeks, Maddie unable to escape the bounds of a bad marriage, and Leonard unable to escape the bounds of his broken mind.
    • 2/5
      An early-80s love triangle among college seniors made slightly more interesting by throwing in a severe case of bipolar disorder. Actually, that part of it really resonated with me: as a bipolar sufferer myself (though with far milder symptoms), I can sympathize with Leonard's troubles. As the wife of a man with OCD, I can sympathize with Madeleine's dilemmas. Mitchell's experiences with religion and poverty did not cover any new ground, and his selfishness with regard to Madeleine was tiresome. This isn't a book you read for the plot, because there isn't a whole lot: you read it for the characters. If the characters are compelling, you want to know more about them. For me, this book was mostly a way to pass the time. The ending was kind of unsatisfying, but I don't know how else it could have ended.
    • 3/5
      A well-written and entertaining book that is occasionally thought-provoking -- but not as often as it strives to be. If you are nostalgic for that time right after college when you are just discovering the meaning of adult love and finding out who you are and where your path leads in this world, then this book will appeal to you. Otherwise, it will sometimes feel trite and naive.
    • 2/5
      I should not have read this so close to The Interestings. They are the same book. Lovely prose about uninteresting people with a story told in multiple points-of-view via an omniscient narrative with an unhealthy dependence on flashback. Both books could have been more compelling, if they'd merely picked a character and stuck with them. Instead, everyone is superficial and glossed over, with mismatched storylines and zero momentum.

      No more contemporary literary fiction for me. None! I don't care how many people sing a book's praises. No more. I swear it.
    • 4/5


      The elitism and esoteric references agitated me, yet.....I was into the story. Characters revealed themselves--not so much transformations into adulthood as peeling away the layers.
    • 4/5
      He has done it again! I must say that Eugenides is a very talented author--all of his works are unique, poignant, and thought provoking. In The Virgin Suicides he tackles suicide, Middlesex hermaphrodism, and now, mental health disorders--and love.

      The three main characters find themselves in a love triangle when we first meet them on their graduation day. There is Madeline, the girl who loves books and wishes to specialize in Victorian books. Leonard, a biologist who we learn is manic depressive. And Mitchell, madly in love with Madeline, but goes to India to volunteer for Mother Teresa for a year, hoping Madeline will leave Leonard and marry him.

      At the start of the book, Madeline is heartbroken because, when she confessed her love to Leonard, he blew her off--and she left. Leonard, thwarted by his emotional past wasn't retreads to say those words back to her, but didn't want her to leave either--at that time he ditched his meds and had himself a bipolar bender.

      He's hospitalized and she comes back to him....and they live happily ever after....NOT!! You'll just have to read it to find out what happens. You won't be disappointed, although you may hate the characters....