Book Review: The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides

It comes weighted with a decade’s worth of anticipation. Yet Jeffrey Eugenides’ third novel comes as light relief, compared to his two earlier works of fiction, ‘Middlesex’ and the ‘Virgin Suicides’.

It’s the early 1980’s, and American college students are reading Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. Here, we meet Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard. And thus begins the love triangle.

Madeleine (beautiful, uncertain English major) is in love with Leonard (brooding, troubled scientific genius), while Mitchell (Greek, religious student) is in love with Madeleine.

We first meet the three protagonists at their college graduation in 1982. Madeleine has rejected Mitchell for a second time, and soon finds love in the arms of maniacal, genetics-lab genius Leonard.  The long-suffering Mitchell soon heads off to other continents, in search of religion and god, while also completing a stint of voluntary do-gooding (with Mother Teresa in Calcutta). Meanwhile, Madeleine and Leonard battle the ups and downs of his mental illness, and Madeleine continues to explore the possibility of a ‘marriage plot’ suitable for pro-feminist heroines.

There is plenty of talk of proposals, and even a marriage, and while the story is dotted with references to marriage plots and matrimony, Eugenides’ latest creation remains a story about coming of age, more than anything else.

‘The Marriage Plot’ is immensely readable, both funny and heartfelt, and with the unmistakably beguiling writing that can only be Eugenides. It is touched with a hint of the soap opera, but still, it remains a sprightly, entertaining read, indeed worth having waited for.

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