Monday, May 14, 2012

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I'm not sure I loved this book but I guess the fact I read all 400+ pages in less than 2 days means I was intrigued by it.  It certainly wasn't as good as his Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex.  The story starts on graduation day at Brown.  It focuses on three graduates, Madeleine, an upper class English student whose father was President of a small college in New Jersey and the two guys in her life, Leonard an intense, brilliant but troubled lower class boy from a troubled family in Portland and Mitchell, a half Greek, half Irish boy from Detroit who's been friends with Madeleine but wants more.  It follows Madeleine and Leonard's move to Cape Cod where Leonard has a biology fellowship and Madeleine tries to provide support as she also deals with her family who don't like Leonard and tries to get into graduate school.  At the same time Mitchell travels to Europe and India seeking out religion and trying to get Madeleine out of his head.  Some of the exploration of various religious and literary theories, by Mitchell and Madeleine, respectively, gets a little tedious but the relationship between the three main characters (and some minor characters around them) is fascinating enough to keep the book moving beyond these slower parts.

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