The Marriage Plot

By Jeffrey Eugenides

The new novel from the bestselling author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.

Brown University, 1982. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English student and incurable romantic, is writing her thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot – authors of the great marriage plots. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different men, intervenes.

Leonard Bankhead, brilliant scientist and charismatic loner, attracts Madeleine with an intensity that she seems powerless to resist. Meanwhile, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus, a theology student searching for some kind of truth in life, is certain of at least one thing – that he and Madeleine are destined to be together.

But as all three leave college, they will have to figure out how they want their own marriage plot to end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Oct 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9780007441273

Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by FSG to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and France’s Prix Médicis. The Marriage Plot (FSG, 2011) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won both the Prix Fitzgerald and the Madame Figaro Literary Prize. His collection of short stories, Fresh Complaint, is from FSG (2017). Eugenides is a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton.

Reviews for The Marriage Plot

[lxydis-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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")

[stacey2112 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

...MAYBE 2.5. There is some good writing in there, but it wasn't enough to save this book for me. I thought the plot concept was too weak to carry this much wordage, all tangents & book-name dropping. I found the characters one-dimensional and immature, and many of the relationships between characters unrealistic. not impressed.

[kristysp · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh, Mr. Eugenides, you are good. Just as I did his other two novels, I LOVED this book. It's not perfect, but it is such a pleasure to read. Very entertaining and involved. Just the right amount of literary snark and intellectualism. He's excellent. I can't wait for his next book.

[untitled841 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Smashing characters. Developed beautifully within the story. Created a believable and highly desired ending!

[melissarochelle_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Read from August 04 to 19, 2011There are some authors everyone expects amaze-balls from. Eugenides is one of those. And of course, there are overrated writers that people praise because they think it's cool..Eugenides is not one of those (but Franzen is.) While I don't think this is anything like Middlesex, it's definitely worth reading.I didn't LOVE this one, but I liked it. I never wanted to stop reading it, I just didn't read it as quickly as a book that I'm LOVING, you know? Each character is completely developed and I loved Leonard, Mitchell, and Madeline.... They're all flawed, but like real people, they've got good qualities, too.

[erickibler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the Regency and Victorian periods, English novels usually had a "marriage plot", in which the heroine dealt with choosing between marrying one of two men, each having different personality characteristics. This book is an update and a deconstruction that type of plot.

There's a love triangle, in which Madeleine, a lit major, chooses between Mitchell, a soul-searching religious studies major, and Leonard, a troubled biology major. The action takes place in the early eighties (why Eugenides chose to set it then I haven't figured out yet, but I was pleased, because that made the characters my contemporaries).

All of the characters are well-read and intelligent. Plenty of books are discussed and name-dropped. Whenever I expected someone to be a cliche, or a "type", I was put in my place by Eugenides' insight and mastery of characterization. I would recommend this book to any bibliophile who enjoys a good exploration of the human heart (a love story, in other words). But don't read it if you're one of those romance buffs who expects a happily-ever-after ending. This book is much more nuanced than that, and takes into consideration that just because people love one another, it doesn't necessarily mean they should spend their lives together.

This book, for the most part, tells a smaller-scale story than "Middlesex", except for a section where Mitchell, in his trip to India, contemplates some larger questions and comes to know himself better. I found Mitchell Grammaticus to be one of the most engaging characters I've read about this year.

This is a book that I may come back to one day, and I don't say that lightly.

[eidzior_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was thoroughly enjoying the story until Eugenides incorrectly uses the title "Seeds of Temptation" for a Thomas Merton book that Mitchel brings along only to discover that there is also a factual error of the same sort in the printed version of the book. Such a mistake seems unprofessional on the part of both the publisher and the writer.

That being said, it's been something like 7 years since Middlesex was in paperback and since I read it so I don't exactly remember what I loved so much about it. This was an enjoyable and easy book and of course saddens me so much being a happily married woman (a Stage 2?). I found myself remembering my own days of Undergrad and what it was like to be newly in love with my now husband.

A good read especially if you were an English Major in College.

[akmargie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Okay this was a serious, straight up adult literary book and I didn't hate it! The writing is of course superb although at times gets weighted down with a few too many intellectual fancy-pants references. The story, what there was, was compacted, complex and oddly satisfying. The characters too were complex and messed up and crazy and absurd and quite honestly lovely. The time period, early 80's was always well done. Good narrator too. I enjoyed it for sure.

[tracey8824_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Wow...This book took longer to read than most I've read lately. Not sure why. I enjoyed The Marriage Plot for a variety of reasons. At first, I enjoyed reading about the city in which I was born and grew up (Providence) and tried to imagine the confusing East Side streets (my childhood church is on Congdon St). After awhile, I really started to care about Madeline, Leonard, and Mitchell even though in real life I'd probably not like them very much.

The Marriage Plot is the story of these 3 people at the end of their college careers at Brown University. What will they do when they grow up? Who will they be? In relationships, is love enough or is more needed? I don't think any of these questions were answered and that's ok. It was enjoyable to go along on their journeys.

[matamgirl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books that I had fairly high expectations of because reviewers raved about it. It started off okay but then our three main protagonists became insufferable. Mitchell less so than the other two but still. Madeleine turned from a strong female character to a whining complainer. If this is a well-written woman then I would hate to see a poorly written one. Nothing she seemed to do mattered. It was all about how the men reacted to her. She wasn't much of a character in her own right. But then again I guess turning women into objects is something that Eugenides did in "The Virgin Suicides" so I shouldn't be surprised.

[alexandriaginni · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Read ~ 100 pages. I'm done reading it, although technically I'm not going to finish reading it. My time is too valuable to spend reading a book that doesn't "grab" me.

[katieanyc · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eugenides writes characters wonderfully, and he seems to be saying something about the shift in narrative away from the marriage plot running alongside the growing impermanence of marriage itself. An erudite, enjoyable read that likely won't have the more universal appeal of his other work.

[melanielgarrett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Not having read Middlesex (yet), I had nothing no reference points for The Marriage Plot. Luckily, the author has woven hundreds of profound, provocative, and downright hilarious references through the text himself.

I can't think of any other 'campus novel' where I've had the feeling of being in the company of characters who seemed not just believable, but believably clever. Eugenides manages to capture that intoxicating sense of being in one's intellectual prime without once patronising the reader. If you like jokes about semiotics and theology, then this one is for you. If you know nothing about semiotics and/or theology but are interested in being delighted by the ironies of both, this is still the one for you, as you will find everything you need effortlessly slipped into place for you.

But the real strength of the novel, to my mind, is the unflinching emotional core. Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard never let the fact that they are clever get in the way of making mistakes, which makes them so endearing to be around. I finished the book a few days ago and am still waking up missing these characters in the morning.

Thoroughly recommended.

[deadseasquirrels · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Deserves at least 4 stars, maybe 4.5.

I think the relationship between Madeleine and Leonard wasn't as romantic as I would have liked and it was hard for me to sense the physical beauty of Madeleine's despite many people's protestations, but overall I think the feelings of desperation and longing were strong between the characters.

I had read about physical and even psychological similarities between people Eugenides knew and the characters in the book, and if I hadn't read about it I don't know if I would have made that connection (without some modicum of random thought), and overall I think that realization detracted from the experience. I found myself taken away from the characters as people in it of themselves, and comparing the authenticity of the "portrayal."

Overall Eugenides has done it again and he writes about contemporary American life as deftly as anybody.

[tippycanoegal · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oh dear. I had a hard time rating this one. One the one hand, it hits me right in the demographic, with its story about a a Brown college English major in the early 1980s. (I was at a different liberal arts small college, Occidental, but the details are very true to my own experience, right down to the syllabus of the Lit Crit course.) So, I was prepped to love this, and indeed, I did love the trip down memory lane. I also, surprisingly, loved the last two pages with their perfect ending. Sadly, the rest of the book never quite gelled for me. I just did not feel that the characters ever truly breathed and I found myself annoyed a number of times when things happened or people said things that just did not in any way ring true for me. So, despite the fact that I am doing just what Eugenides warns against "I loved the book because...", "It spoke to me because...", I never fully committed to this book and found it ultimately disappointing.

[pam8enser · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

B*tches in Bookstores inspired me to finally pick this up. Thanks Jill and Kelly!

I think that Eugenides has trouble with satisfying endings. I felt the same way with Middlesex as I did with The Marriage Plot.

I liked this book, I like the way it was told through the 3 different characters, but at the same time, I felt like the method of storytelling didn't lend itself well to building depth in these characters. Yes, we got to know about them, but I never truly felt like I understood what each of them was doing or their true rationale behind their actions. Believe it or not, I didn't feel like the book was long enough; maybe he could have used his language more efficiently but I don't know.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked this book. It's just no Middlesex or The Virgin Suicides.

[kirstiecat · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It isn't really fair to compare Jeffrey Eugenides to Jeffrey Eugenides. Mainly, this is because he's an exceptional writer who has proven himself, mainly with Middlesex. And with this proof comes the harsh burden of expectation. We expect more and also long for it because we know his capabilities.

If I were to compare The Marriage Plot with any random novel off the shelves, it would probably garner a 4 star review at the least. But, because I've waited with baited breath 9 YEARS since Middlesex, my expectation level had grown to the ferocity of a literary tiger. That said, The Marriage Plot is somewhat of a disappointment.

I should say, one of my main issues with this novel is that the main character isn't really all that likeable to me. She's a little wishy washy and she identified herself as an Austenist or Victorianist, which is probably my least favorite era of writing in the canon of the history of literature. In fact, the novel is engaging enough but only because the first half of it delves mainly into books and semiotics. In fact, there are points where I thought I might be secretly auditing a class at Brown. The discussions are interesting but Eugenides tries to throw in the human element with characters that aren't as worth caring about or as rich as they were in Middlesex and so we feel more emptiness and disappointment.

The novel starts to take a much different shape at the point of graduation and, to backtrack just a little bit, it is a little odd that Eugenides would set the novel in 1982...there were some of the similar economic circumstances then (though not as bleak) for graduates and so it seems relevant yet not relevant...one can't help wondering about the characters now, who would be in their 50s, and how they truly ended up but there isn't any follow up on that.

In any case, at the point of graduation, the novel turns to delve into religion and a trip through Europe then India with one main male character and the idea of love in the brink of manic depression with the main couple. Perhaps the most interesting character to me is Mitchell, who is the one whose faith is being tested. He has an idea of marriage and formula to success and living one's life but there's something in him that is struggling with all of this and to try to work religion in. An intelligent person struggling with concepts of religion is always a good topic in my opinion.

I'm a little too close to the manic depression topic as I have a family member with that diagnosis so a great deal of these parts of the book weren't eye opening or profound to me. Nor were they all that engaging. I suppose if you wanted a guide or outlook of dealing with a romantic relationship where one member struggles with manic depression woven into a work of fiction this is the novel for you.

I don't want to give away the ending of this novel but I am about to make a statement on it below so please don't read on if you are one of those types who wants to leave everything up for yourself. Basically, my statement is that the strength of the novel does lie in its ending, which is more feminist that anything Jane Austen ever wrote. However, afterwards, you aren't left with the same revelry that you felt in reading Middlesex. The writing is strong but after nearly a decade of waiting, I was expecting something much more profound. Honestly, I wish I had just spent that time re-reading that novel instead.

Memorable quotes:

pg. 23 "The one Sunday morning, before winter break, Abby's boyfriend Whitney, materialized at their kitchen table, reading somethin called Of Grammatology. When Madelene asked what the book was about, she was given to understand by Whitney that the idea of a book being "about" something was exactly what this book was against, and that, if it was "about" something , then it was the need to stop thinking of books as about things."

pg. 41 "It's proportional," Leonard explained. "When you're five, you've only been a live a couple thousand days. But by the time you're fifty, you've lived around twenty thousand days. So a day when you're five seems longer because it's a greater percentage of the whole."

pg. 57-58 "The Russians have it made. Tolstoyan! That guy was an adjective waiting to happen."
"Don't forget Tolstoyanism," Madeleine said.
"My God," Leonard said, "A noun! I've never even dreamed of being a noun!"

pg. 86 "Parties bring my misanthropy into focus."

pg. 122 "A line from Barthes she remembered 'Every lover is mad, we are told. But can we imagine a madman in love?"

pg. 149 "Q: In which shape will the dead rise?"
"A: The dead will rise in their own bodies."

pg. 204 "This, Tolstoy says [in the book A Confession], is our human predicament: we're the man clutching the branch. Death awaits us. There is no escape. And so we distract ourselves by licking whatever drops of honey come within our reach."

pg. 275 "With their flintlock rifles, the Minutemen had fought for liberty and won. If they'd been on lithium, though, they wouldn't have been Minutemen. They would have been Fifteen-minutemen or Half-hour-men. They would have been slow to get their rifles loaded and arrive on the battlefield, and by then the British would have won."

pg. 322 "Today," he announced with satisfaction, "I find the leather ghetto. There is a ghetto for everything in this city."

...

"Yes, you need a passport to prove to the world you exist. The people at passport control, they cannot look at you and SEE you as are a person. No! They have to look at a photograph of you. THEN they believe you exist!"

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A thoroughly enjoyable read, the sort of book that demands a high level of attention but which always repays it. I was sorry to get to the end. The three main characters are interesting and there are some fascinating insights into side subjects like semiotics, lithium in 7-Up and the reproductive capabilities of yeast.Having just watched 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' yesterday, I didn't think the dénouement was quite as original as the author had hoped, but that's a minor quibble (and I suppose that was a film, not a book, so maybe the point still holds).

[carissa.green · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this book. It was like a big hot fudge sundae for anyone who has ever been a lovesick, confused English (or Religious Studies) major. My only quibble is that Eugenides throws in a bunch of great period details, but considering the chronology of the characters' undergraduate years and the year or so following graduation, I think some of them may be in the wrong place and slightly anachronistic. I'd love for another reader to prove me wrong, though, so I can upgrade this review to five stars.

[purplehena · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a surprisingly quick read, despite the length. It drew me in and kept me engaged. In the end, I wouldn't say this will be a favorite, but it's worth checking out.

[samchan_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have lots of respect for Jeffrey Eugenides, but this book just didn’t resonate with me. I wonder if this is related to the point at which I find myself in life right now. Maybe if I had just graduated from college and was still searching for my identity, the themes here would've spoken to me more. I had absolutely zero interest in Madeleine or Mitchell. The Leonard parts broke my heart and kept me engaged, but probably because Leonard is speculated to be a fictionalized version of David Foster Wallace, whom I love. The main emotion I felt after finishing the novel was relief, not exactly what I thought I’d feel after reading one of the most hyped books of 2011.

[sharon.flesher · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I agree with other reviewers that this was not as good as "Middlesex," however, I still enjoyed it, perhaps because I related to the character of Madeleine. Although I didn't share her privileged upbringing, I could understand her confused ambitions, her susceptibility to Leonard, her ambiguity to Mitchell, her close yet sometimes tense relations with her family, and her literary interests. It has to be difficult to follow something as epic as "Middlesex," and this novel surely won't be every reader's taste. It's a character-driven novel, which usually means a reader has to find at least one of the main characters compelling to stay engaged.

[ddrysdale-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The book's been falsely advertised as being about literary theory, a defense of the plot-driven novel against the abstraction of an idea of literary theory that is at least twenty-five years out of date (though admittedly it clings on in some departments), but it's really not. It's actually just a boring book with boring characters who act out a boring plot that is a struggle to muster much interest for. It wasn't that the characters were unlikeable. That's giving them too much credit. It is that each of the three protagonists were so profoundly uninteresting, each in his or her own way, and the supporting characters no better. You can't even really dislike any of them. They're just so shallow and predictable that there's nothing to dislike. You just can't muster enough enthusiasm to dislike any of them. There's not enough here for that. It's just not a good book.

[helgagrace · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The parts of this book that I liked best--references to literary theory--were sadly minor as Eugenides focused the action away from the intellectual challenges of college and toward post-graduation relationship angst and religious experimentation. I found none of the characters particularly appealing, which always makes it difficult for me to remain invested in a book even when its ideas are compelling. The resolution felt abrupt after the extensive detail given to Mitchell's Indian sojourn. In fact, although the book began with Madeleine and hinges on her romantic decision-making, it seemed most sympathetic to Mitchell, to the extent that returning to either of the other primary characters, while necessary, was somewhat jarring.

There were, however, many lines which made me nod my head and smile wryly, such as: "Since Derrida claimed that language, by its very nature, undermined any meaning it attempted to promote, Madeleine wondered how Derrida expected her to get his meaning." Perhaps the vagueness of the ending is meant to signify the invalidity of the "Marriage Plot" construct--there is no tidy, happy ending, only a hesitant optimism. I find myself wanting to read Derrida, and Cixous, and think about language and philosophy, and that in itself makes this book a worthwhile read.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jeffrey Eugenides' new novel, tells the story of three college students attending Brown during the early eighties. There's a love triangle of sorts, anchored by Madeline, a reserved English major who chose her course of study because she loves to read, only to find that writers such as Austen, James and Eliot are distinctly uncool. She's not the kind of girl to embrace partying and she spends much of her time during her freshman year with Mitchell, a skinny, curly-haired boy who has fallen in love with her but, whether through sensitivity or insecurity, never makes his move. Then Madeline tries to join the cutting edge of scholarship by taking Semiotics 211, where she meets Leonard.The boy without eyebrows spoke up first. "Um, let's see. I'm finding it hard to introduce myself, actually, because the whole idea of social introductions is so problematized. Like, if I tell you my name is Thurston Meems and that I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, will you know who I am?"...When it was the turn of the boy next to Madeline, he said in a quiet voice that...his parents had named him Leonard, that it had always seemed pretty handy to have a name, especially when you were being called to dinner, and that if anyone wanted to call him Leonard he would answer to it.The focus of the book is on the relationships that ebb and flow between the three, but each character is given the chance to tell their own stories with the point of view moving between them, sometimes circling back to revisit events from a different angle. Of the three, Leonard is the flashiest. Brilliant, charismatic and mentally ill, he takes up all of the space in whichever room he is in. He comes from a less affluent home on the west coast.If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative. If you grew up with emotionally stunted parents, who were unhappy in their marriage and prone to visit that unhappiness on their children, you didn't know they were doing this. It was just your life...If you weren't a lucky child, you didn't know you weren't lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.Mitchell and Madeline are both naturally reserved and so take less space in company than Leonard, but are no less intense when they are telling their own stories. Mitchell is not sure what he wants to do with his life. He's been urged to consider divinity school by a professor, but he's ambivalent. He decides to spend a year traveling with a friend. He and Madeline aren't close anymore, but he hasn't entirely gotten rid of the idea of her. And Madeline's a mess. She graduates without a plan and takes a while to find what she wants to do. The Marriage Plot is beautifully written. Eugenides leaves a decade between each novel and it is time well spent. There isn't a dud scene or an infelicitous phrase in the entire book.

[sianpr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Marriage Plot revolves around a love triangle involving Madeleine, Leonard & Mitchell, who first meet at university. While Madeleine marries Leonard - a marriage that is doomed from the outset - Mitchell goes off to India to find enlightenment before returning to the States and reconnecting with Madeleine. It took me a while to get into the story, primarily because of the level of detail in the early chapters. However, once the story got going I became totally engrossed & there is some excellent writing.

[jennin_10 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written but not as memorable as 'Middlesex'. Funny at times, sad at times, frustrating in that main character, Maddy, can be so bright academically yet so naive in dealing with Leonard's illness.

[limelite_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Another domestic novel of manners a la Austen and Wharton but much modernized and possessing neither Austen nor Wharton-like quality. Unlike their famous works, this effort is flimsy, thin, and uncontrolled in comparison and doesn’t pack the power to speak to us about our age like "Sense and Sensibility" or "The Age of Innocence" do about the age in which they are set. Nor, do I think will this novel enjoy staying power anything like they have.I may be too old to care about twenty-somethings setting out in life after college. I set out 15 years before the graduates in this book, in an age when war concentrated the mind and gave one inspiration for purposeful direction. The three main characters who make up the on again, off again love triangle flounder, are immature, and suffer the prime crime of fiction -- they are not memorable. I don't even remember their names.More indicting is that I didn’t give a damn about the character whose manic depression overtook the book as the plot disappeared. Why did my empathy disappear? It may not be totally fair to blame the author, but I do. The other hero, who I could never picture, he was so vaguely drawn, went out to chase down god on a spiritual journey to India. Exit stage right. Flee my interest. Eugenides drags him back center stage at the close of the novel just for the purpose of him having a grown up realization that he didn’t love the heroine under her terms. The heroine existed to be a care-taker and the usual female English major, only burdened with indecisiveness and with little or no will of her own. Nothing like Elinor Dashwood, or the Countess Olenska.My disappointment in this effort by Eugenides is compounded because I thought "Middlesex" was an original and profound novel. I expected better but didn't get it. With a title like he chose, Mr. Eugenides had a high bar to hurdle. Too high for him, apparently.

[muddyboy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

First let me say the I enjoyed Eugenides Pulitzer Prize winner Middlesex but this is not that book. When I first started into it I thought - This is like Phillip Roth without the sex. (Maybe it could have used some.) This is essentially a lovers triangle book but the problem is you will scratch your head trying to figure out what they find attractive about each other. Madeleine is the object of attention of two men that have enough baggage to fill a freight train. The only "normal" people are Maggie's parents (somewhat) and all the minor characters in the book. There is way to much introspection and angst and you wonder why they just don't move on in their lives. The actual dialogue and writing is fine but the characters I would run away from if I saw them in public..

[adzebill · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Marriage Plot is more clearly autobiographical than Middlesex, with careful 1980s references: descriptions of genetics at the time match my undergraduate memories. I found the portrayal of manic depression and the long-suffering partner moving, and the satire of theory-ridden English classes hilarious, but other readers might not.