Books: THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides

Title: The Marriage Plot
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Published: 2011
Genre: Fiction

The Virgin Suicides, Eugenides' first book and Middlesex, his second, were both mysterious. The Virgin Suicides in its depiction of a family of three daughters growing up under the severely strict parenting of a Catholic domineering father- who all ultimately commit suicide left me with an unanswered. Why? A great review of the Virgin Suicides here. Middlesex was fairly straightforward, as the historical elements of the novel woven around the history of a Greek family leaving Greece, settling in the US and the discovery of the daughter that she is a hermaphrodite. This in itself a mysterious subject. I dare say this is my very abridged version of a book that won Jeffrey Eugenides the Pullitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Marriage Plot is different. A story of a love triangle between friends about to embark on their lives and futures after their graduation from college. A story of the unrequited love of Mitchell Grammaticus, a religious studies graduate for Madeleine, the central figure. Madeleine Hanna, an english language major and great lover of Jane Austen, is in love with and goes on to marry Leonard Bankhead, an intelligent science major and manic-depressive whose steady decline into his mania courses throughout the entire book.

The Marriage Plot is a journey into the intellect of these three people, who are intellectuals and debate ad nauseum in some cases the angst in their lives whilst relating it to some of the intellectual works they read in their various majors. I enjoyed that constant diversion, but tended to also find it distracting before it always inevitably led me to exploring the sub plots and related reading a lot more. I admit to loving the ending where Eugenides crafts an unpredictable yet realistic finale where they all end up going their separate ways rather than force a happily-ever-after ending.

What I enjoyed: The constantly shifting perspectives of the protagonists gave a sense of reading stories within the story, where each of the three characters is alloted their own chapters and their stories developed almost independently of the others.