The Marriage Plot
By: Jeffrey Eugenides
The Author - this guy has mad eyebrows
I loved this one. Loved it.
The Marriage Plot is a novel in the full sense of the word. It has great, fully-fleshed out characters, it’s easy to get lost in the story, and the ending is satisfying without tying everything up in a neat bow. Also helpful? I genuinely empathized with the three main characters, even though I didn’t really like everything they did. The story jumps around chronologically a bit in the beginning, which normally annoys me, but Eugenides handled it perfectly.
This is actually a pretty tight little story – it takes place in the year immediately following the three main characters’ graduation from Brown (with a few flashbacks thrown in for background details). The first 200 pages or so just focus on the summer after their graduation.
That said, Eugenides covers a lot of ground in those twelve months. In The Marriage Plot, he tells the story of the sort-of love triangle between Madeleine, a full-blown Jane Austen-ite, Leonard, a charismatic wanna be scientist with manic depression, and Mitchell, a love-sick, answer-seeking theologist. Madeleine and Leonard are in the throes of an intense relationship, challenged by Leonard’s illness, while Mitchell is trying to cope with his love for Madeleine while seeking a deeper spiritual understanding by traveling around the world.
In telling the story of Madeleine, Mitchell, and Leonard, Eugenides hits on two major themes – relationships (and their complications) and dealing with mental illness, with a little bit of “finding yourself” thrown in for good measure. None of these are new topics, but Eugenides builds a really nice story around them that was hard to put down.
In a nutshell: Eugenides is a great writer and he put together a great book. Four and a half stars.
