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Review
"Eugenides's first novel since 2002's Pulitzer Prize–winning Middlesex so impressively, ambitiously breaks the mold of its predecessor that it calls for the founding of a new prize to recognize its success both as a novel--and as a Jeffrey Eugenides novel."--Publishers Weekly
"A stunning novel—erudite, compassionate and penetrating in its analysis of love relationships... Eugenides continues to show that he is one of the finest of contemporary novelists."--Kirkus Reviews
"With this tightly, immaculately self-contained tale set upon pillars at once imposing and of dollhouse scale, namely, academia (“College wasn’t like the real world,” Madeleine notes) and the emotions of the youngest of twentysomethings, Eugenides realizes the novel whose dismantling his characters examine."--Booklist
"Eugenides’s superb third novel is his most mature to date, the work of an author who has achieved a new gravity after the audacious brilliance of his earlier work... Eugenides looks poised to become a writer on a par with Updike and Cheever as an anatomist of contemporary American matters."--Stephen Amidon, Sunday Times
"Being Eugenides, the book is immensely readable, funny and heartfelt with instantly beguiling writing that springs effortlessly back and forth over the years’ events."--Daily Telegraph
"A marvellous, compulsive storyteller, richly allusive, he reminds us that while love may not always be a triumph, it follows its own wayward course to the end."--Sunday Telegraph
"Erudite, smart and entertaining."--Daily Mail
"...powerful and all consuming. Forget the hearts and flowers; this is a challenging and intellectual novel about life and the intricate human relationships it weaves."--Express
"Nobody is going to accuse Jeffrey Eugenides’s new novel of being insufficiently clever. It is a big book of tricks."--New Statesman
"A scintillating exercise in campus comedy."--Sunday Times
"Masterful... Eugenides brilliantly captures the excitement of intellectual discovery and argument for its own sake."--Psychologies
"Thought provoking and entertaining... utterly engrossing... Eugenides hasn’t just raised his game, he’s changed the fictional goalposts."--Henry Sutton, Mirror
"His understanding of the agony and the ecstasy of manic depressions displays a level of empathy the illness never yet found in a novel."--Economist --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
"A stunning novel—erudite, compassionate and penetrating in its analysis of love relationships... Eugenides continues to show that he is one of the finest of contemporary novelists."--Kirkus Reviews
"With this tightly, immaculately self-contained tale set upon pillars at once imposing and of dollhouse scale, namely, academia (“College wasn’t like the real world,” Madeleine notes) and the emotions of the youngest of twentysomethings, Eugenides realizes the novel whose dismantling his characters examine."--Booklist
"Eugenides’s superb third novel is his most mature to date, the work of an author who has achieved a new gravity after the audacious brilliance of his earlier work... Eugenides looks poised to become a writer on a par with Updike and Cheever as an anatomist of contemporary American matters."--Stephen Amidon, Sunday Times
"Being Eugenides, the book is immensely readable, funny and heartfelt with instantly beguiling writing that springs effortlessly back and forth over the years’ events."--Daily Telegraph
"A marvellous, compulsive storyteller, richly allusive, he reminds us that while love may not always be a triumph, it follows its own wayward course to the end."--Sunday Telegraph
"Erudite, smart and entertaining."--Daily Mail
"...powerful and all consuming. Forget the hearts and flowers; this is a challenging and intellectual novel about life and the intricate human relationships it weaves."--Express
"Nobody is going to accuse Jeffrey Eugenides’s new novel of being insufficiently clever. It is a big book of tricks."--New Statesman
"A scintillating exercise in campus comedy."--Sunday Times
"Masterful... Eugenides brilliantly captures the excitement of intellectual discovery and argument for its own sake."--Psychologies
"Thought provoking and entertaining... utterly engrossing... Eugenides hasn’t just raised his game, he’s changed the fictional goalposts."--Henry Sutton, Mirror
"His understanding of the agony and the ecstasy of manic depressions displays a level of empathy the illness never yet found in a novel."--Economist --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
“There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.” Anthony Trollope
It’s the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead – charismatic loner and college Darwinist – suddenly turns up in a seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus – who’s been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange – resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.
Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they have learned. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can’t escape the secret responsible for Leonard’s seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.
Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Not having reading anything by Eugenides before, I was curious to discover what has made him a Pullitzer prize-winner.
This is the story of the triangular relationship between three young Americans who meet at university in the early 1980s: Madeleine, a diligent student of English literature, but lacking in a sense of direction, falls for the brilliant, charismatic but manic depressive biologist, Leonard. Meanwhile, after a brief friendship which comes to nothing, Mitchell loves her from afar, and seeks escapism in religious theory, and a circuitous journey to India to work as a volunteer for Mother Theresa.
The novel is a modern take on the "marriage plot", seen by one of Madeleine's English professors as the dominant theme of novels up to 1900, based on the idea that women could only achieve success through marrying men, ideally with money, after which they "lived happily ever after" or endured their fate, since there was no easy escape route via divorce.
The author's technical talent is displayed through some vivid and imaginative descriptions, and his sharp ear for dialogue. The recreation of the events and attitudes of the 1980s rings true, and brings back memories for those who lived through them. Many scenes are funny or poignant. In particular, the analysis of Leonard's manic depression in its various phases strikes close to the bone and often makes for unbearably painful reading.
Ironically, it is the at times almost manic nature of the writing which weakens the structure of the novel, so that the whole may seem less than the sum of the parts. Eugenides spirals off at a tangent where his imagination leads him. For instance, in the early chapters he launches into structuralism and specific works like Barthes' "A Lover's Discourse" without considering or caring how many readers will be able or willing to follow him. In fact, I only needed to "google" for a few minutes to fill the essential gaps in my knowledge, or to check later that the custom-printed wallpaper on Madeleine's bedroom wall was based on a real set of stories about "Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelman. When it came to the genetics of yeast I just let Leonard's explanations wash over me. However, although I have learned more about literature from this book, and extended my vocabulary ("chancre", "pentiment", etc), I feel that the lengthy digressions have been at the expense of the narrative drive.
There is also the author's tendency to meander back and forth in time, which means that many important events are reported, rather than enacted, which would have made them more dramatic.
I was left feeling that I had read a series of on occasion brilliant short stories or thumbnail sketches, held together by a loose plot which at times seems to be about the pain, loss and waste caused by manic depression, although I am sure that is not meant to be the main point. If Eugenides had focused more tightly on the three main characters and developed their interactions more fully, I think I would have cared more about their dilemmas, particularly Madeleine's and Mitchell's.
This is the story of the triangular relationship between three young Americans who meet at university in the early 1980s: Madeleine, a diligent student of English literature, but lacking in a sense of direction, falls for the brilliant, charismatic but manic depressive biologist, Leonard. Meanwhile, after a brief friendship which comes to nothing, Mitchell loves her from afar, and seeks escapism in religious theory, and a circuitous journey to India to work as a volunteer for Mother Theresa.
The novel is a modern take on the "marriage plot", seen by one of Madeleine's English professors as the dominant theme of novels up to 1900, based on the idea that women could only achieve success through marrying men, ideally with money, after which they "lived happily ever after" or endured their fate, since there was no easy escape route via divorce.
The author's technical talent is displayed through some vivid and imaginative descriptions, and his sharp ear for dialogue. The recreation of the events and attitudes of the 1980s rings true, and brings back memories for those who lived through them. Many scenes are funny or poignant. In particular, the analysis of Leonard's manic depression in its various phases strikes close to the bone and often makes for unbearably painful reading.
Ironically, it is the at times almost manic nature of the writing which weakens the structure of the novel, so that the whole may seem less than the sum of the parts. Eugenides spirals off at a tangent where his imagination leads him. For instance, in the early chapters he launches into structuralism and specific works like Barthes' "A Lover's Discourse" without considering or caring how many readers will be able or willing to follow him. In fact, I only needed to "google" for a few minutes to fill the essential gaps in my knowledge, or to check later that the custom-printed wallpaper on Madeleine's bedroom wall was based on a real set of stories about "Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelman. When it came to the genetics of yeast I just let Leonard's explanations wash over me. However, although I have learned more about literature from this book, and extended my vocabulary ("chancre", "pentiment", etc), I feel that the lengthy digressions have been at the expense of the narrative drive.
There is also the author's tendency to meander back and forth in time, which means that many important events are reported, rather than enacted, which would have made them more dramatic.
I was left feeling that I had read a series of on occasion brilliant short stories or thumbnail sketches, held together by a loose plot which at times seems to be about the pain, loss and waste caused by manic depression, although I am sure that is not meant to be the main point. If Eugenides had focused more tightly on the three main characters and developed their interactions more fully, I think I would have cared more about their dilemmas, particularly Madeleine's and Mitchell's.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
Like Jeffrey Eugenides' other two novels, what makes his work special is the characters in them behave exactly as you would expect people in real life to: they make mistakes, they are vulnerable, they are fallible, and in this one they are also mentally ill.
Other readers have gone through the plot so I will give that a miss, but suffice to say that if you love literature (and considering you're on a book-ordering website reading a book review, then you must do) then this is the book for you. Set in collegiate 1980's America, this book touches more on other writers than anything I've ever come across, while weaving the complicated lives of three main characters in a touching and genius way. The characters are rich and complex, almost jumping out of the page at you - one is in love. One is breaking free. One is mentally ill. The pages start to turn themselves and you block out the world just to keep reading. And the small touches the author puts in, moments where one is ashamed or embarrassed or excited, those are ones you relate to and which make you care about the character more and more. There isn't a great deal of action, per se, in the book and yet you finish it feeling like you've run a marathon.
Brilliant writing. I had pre-ordered it and knew I wouldn't be sorry, and sure enough I wasn't.
Other readers have gone through the plot so I will give that a miss, but suffice to say that if you love literature (and considering you're on a book-ordering website reading a book review, then you must do) then this is the book for you. Set in collegiate 1980's America, this book touches more on other writers than anything I've ever come across, while weaving the complicated lives of three main characters in a touching and genius way. The characters are rich and complex, almost jumping out of the page at you - one is in love. One is breaking free. One is mentally ill. The pages start to turn themselves and you block out the world just to keep reading. And the small touches the author puts in, moments where one is ashamed or embarrassed or excited, those are ones you relate to and which make you care about the character more and more. There isn't a great deal of action, per se, in the book and yet you finish it feeling like you've run a marathon.
Brilliant writing. I had pre-ordered it and knew I wouldn't be sorry, and sure enough I wasn't.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The Marriage Plot disappointed me. Perhaps it's unfair to compare anything to a book as sublime as Middlesex but Jeffrey Eugenides set that bar so very high. As you will expect he remains a wonderful writer but unfortunately the plot of this novel is somewhat prosaic and the characters do not elicit much empathy. I simply didn't care what happened to them. It's an easy read and satisfying to a degree - just not much depth or originality. I couldn't find anything in the characters or the storyline that I haven't come across elsewhere in a more compelling setting.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
There are no words
Wow, I loved this book so so much, everything was exquisitely written, making this perfect. On the cover it is described as One Day with George Eliot thrown in which I completely... Read more
Published 22 hours ago by Justhavingfun
Loved it
I really enjoyed this book. It was an easy read, ideal for travelling. Wouldn't call it a 'classic' but the story moved along and the characters were reasonably engaging. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Rose
Losing the plot?
Everyone so loved Middlesex - his second book that won the Pulitzer - that they feel somehow let down by this slightly more conventional effort. Read more
Published 1 month ago by The Outsider
Intelligent, engaging and moving
The main character is a young woman studying English Lit in the mid 1980s. Having done that myself, I immediately connected with this novel. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Marian Hartright
A (semiotically) meaningless novel?
The narrative of `The Marriage Plot' has been mentioned in other reviews on this page so I won't repeat it. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Lawrence Jones
Disappointing read
I had really enjoyed Middlesex and liked Jeffrey Eugenides when I saw him interviewed recently on BBC World News. Read more
Published 2 months ago by RELS
Intelligent and absorbing
Having not read Middlesex (I am now!), I had no preconceptions about Eugenides' writing. I was quite captivated by The Marriage Plot. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Wilbo Waggins
Pen portait of Foster Wallace by heir of Updike?
How to write a novel in the modern age must strike many novelists especially those already writing avant-garde or prize-winning experimental books as Jeffrey Eugenides. Read more
Published 3 months ago by technoguy
A dazzling stew
There's no doubt that Eugenides is an excellent writer in a technical sense. And here he has concocted up a dazzling stew made up of a girl so spoiled she doesn't know what she... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Gerard P.
Sexy, funny, manna from heaven...
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... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Melanie Garrett
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