Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

TITLE: The Marriage Plot
AUTHOR: Jeffrey Eugenides
PUBLISHER/YEAR: Farrar, Straus and Giroux/2011
SOURCE: Local Library

Goodreads / Publisher's Website

I know, I know, my review have been pretty sparse for the past week or so. Here's the deal, I've been reading The Marriage Plot and it has been a slog for me. Like I'll read awhile then need to take a break to watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (seriously, have you all watched them yet? have you? because shit is going down). 

Here's the deal Madeleine is an English major, graduating Brown in the early 80s. She's desperately in love with Leonard while Mitchell is desperately in love with her. They're all fairly privileged. They have their problems. But essentially this book is telling the story of these three ivy league grads, a year in the life if you will. 

I just couldn't get into this book. It took me forever to read and this review is taking forever to write. Madeleine as a character just didn't appeal to me. I didn't get a sense of who she was as a person. She seemed totally consumed by her relationships. I'm told she loves Victorian literature. She has super tiny handwriting. Where's her inner life? 

The story is really about Leonard and Mitchell and I just didn't care. Leonard suffers from bipolar disorder, but I never cared about what happened to him or his relationships. Mitchell goes around India trying to figure out spirituality while getting over Madeleine, but so what? They were all just so spoiled and self absorbed. They didn't really care about anyone or anything. I felt no reason to care about them. 

The prose was just a touch too clever. And prepare yourself for a lesson in semiotics. There were just so many references tossed around, it came across as pretentious more than anything else.

I feel like I should have more to say about this book, but I just don't. It just took so long to slog through. I don't have anything really coherent to say. There was nothing super offensive about it, but nothing really stood out either. 


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