The Marriage Plot

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I know, I know. It's been weeks since I've updated. Where I can usually fly through a book in no time, this one was a deeper (hence longer) read than many of the books I've read lately. Therefore, I'll make up for quantity of February blog posts with quality.

I typically don't like the idea of using an author's own words against him. But there's a section on pages 345 and 346 of this very novel that addresses my sentiments of The Marriage Plot.

The experience...was like reading certain difficult books. It was like plowing through late James, or the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karenina, until you suddenly got to a good part again, which kept on getting better and better until you were so enthralled that you were almost grateful for the previous dull stretch because it increased your eventual pleasure.

I don't think Eugenides would really appreciate me saying that pieces of the book rivaled Tolstoy's discussion of land reform (at least I wouldn't). Parts of the book were slow, but then others were so engaging that, despite the heavy vocabulary, you kept going.
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 You probably think that was a nice way of saying I hated the book. I didn't! I just want to make readers aware that it isn't a "beach read," if you know what I mean.

I hate Dickens for the way he describes characters. He is far too descriptive for my tastes. However, I adore descriptions of times and places, and Marriage Plot did not disappoint in this aspect. Readers find themselves in a number of places: Rhode Island, Oregon, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Paris, Monaco, Athens, Calcutta. Eugenides describes each location adequately, depending on its relationship to the story.
It's a fictitious novel based in the 1980s that did not discuss AIDS or snorting coke, but instead touched on literary and social styles of the decade. The protagonist, Madeleine, is a recent graduate of Brown university with a degree in English lit. Though she's a self-proclaimed "Victorianist," specializing in Austen, she finds her final semester attending postmodern theory classes. Here, Madeleine meets a variety of characters enchanted by the social, music, and literary reforms of the early 80s. The time also plays an important part in her own literary studies, as she claims the Victorian theme of a marriage plot no longer exists in contemporary literature.

The plot contains a love triangle; Mitchell is in love with Madeleine, although that love in unrequited, as she loves Leonard. A religious studies major, Mitchell is on an intercontinental spiritual journey after graduating from Brown. The point of view shifts throughout the book from Madeleine's to Leonard's to Mitchell's, wherever one may be at any particular point during the year-long time span. Although Mitchell was not my favorite character, his periods abroad were typically my favorite setting descriptions, particularly while he was volunteering for Mother Teresa and the Kalighat in India. 

If you have never read Eugenides's 2002 Pulitzer winner, Middlesex, I highly recommend it (more so than this one, to be honest). One of the most intriguing parts of the book was the author's ability to develop a character from childhood to adulthood while allowing the reader to always know what she (later he) was thinking. Cal was born a hermaphrodite, an internal struggle that most of the human population will never understand. However, Eugenides's writing enabled readers to feel empathy towards the character. 

I'm not digressing, I'm alluding to another story to show a similarity.

In Middlesex, readers followed the internal struggle of someone born with a different physical trait; in The Marriage Plot, the trait is mental. Leonard, Madeleine's boyfriend, has manic-depressive disorder. The author vividly describes Leonard's ups and downs during the year he is with Madeleine, including time he is hospitalized. It shows the trouble he has with everyday tasks, like going to work, versus the highs he has, including wearing a cape and gambling at the Monte Carlo casino. Madeleine's conflicting emotions and feelings towards Leonard are also depicted; she loves him, but does she want to deal with the stress of his disease?

The abrupt ending did bother me somewhat. After text that strolled along for 400 pages, to say the final six were rushed would be an understatement. Maybe that was the point though---the traditional marriage plot doesn't exist in contemporary literature?

Despite taking a while to read, I enjoyed Eugenides's third novel, and would recommend it to other avid readers. However, if you have to choose one of his books, it's this reader/blogger/librarian's opinion that Middlesex is better worth your time. 

Target age range: Adult