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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Interesting, entertaining piece of literary fiction. Set in the 1980s, this book centers on Madeleine Hanna, a young woman graduating from Brown with a degree in English. Her thesis, in a circular nod to this novel's title and story, regards "The Marriage Plot"--the plotline in historical works (such as Jane Austen's) that concerns a woman's journey into marriage and beyond.
I say "circular" because, of course, this novel concerns Madeleine's own romantic journey. The twist is that it's the '80s, and that brings with it several wrinkles not present in Regency/Victorian Era works. How would "The Marriage Plot" play out in a more modern context?
The characters here are likable not despite, but because of their flaws. Are they annoying or do something infuriating now and then? Sure. That the characters evoke a reaction is a sign that the reader cares. The plot is engaging, the pacing is good, and every word by this talented author is in place. Long story short, if the cover blurb sounds at all interesting to you, then The Marriage Plot will prove to be worth your time.
I say "circular" because, of course, this novel concerns Madeleine's own romantic journey. The twist is that it's the '80s, and that brings with it several wrinkles not present in Regency/Victorian Era works. How would "The Marriage Plot" play out in a more modern context?
The characters here are likable not despite, but because of their flaws. Are they annoying or do something infuriating now and then? Sure. That the characters evoke a reaction is a sign that the reader cares. The plot is engaging, the pacing is good, and every word by this talented author is in place. Long story short, if the cover blurb sounds at all interesting to you, then The Marriage Plot will prove to be worth your time.
It’s crazy how Eugenides’s writing style kept me — a notorious description skimmer — captivated across twisting timelines and more cities than I’ve ever come to know in just one book. My favorite part was his way of whispering what is Happening Now, before retreating back to the moment we last saw and leading us to the Now with Detail and Hindsight. It’s textbook Writing With Intrigue (not that that’s a term), and it made me long for my freshman year college creative writing classes. It’s a story for people who love reading and for people who love writing, but more than anything, for people who love both. The whole book is winding and clever, but also as exhaustive and melancholy as the characters. I love all the things this book made me think, and I love that it made me feel academic and childish at the same time. Eugenides is the real deal, and I plan on reading everything he’s got ASAP!!!
challenging
emotional
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Something that pops in my head on occasion is that Leigh Bardugo, who wrote Shadow and Bone (and then Ninth House - awful), planned the former as a classic “hero’s journey.” While I don’t want to say there’s something wrong with that, I definitely feel like there is. I don’t remember her specific wording, but when I read or heard that quote for the first time, this image of someone waiting to sneeze popped into my head. They’re gonna sneeze probably, they can choose to fight the sneeze, some choice is gonna be made, but the sneeze is essentially inevitable so the real choice becomes how the sneeze is gonna get let out. Are they gonna raise their elbow, grab a tissue, bend and aim themselves at the floor, etc. I think fiction is always dealing with that sneeze. The sneeze is this formula, this standard way of processing narrative and prose that other older weirder craftier people back in the day decided was fair and true. And then maybe raising an elbow is writing a “hero’s journey,” and in the end it’s all automatic.
All this to say, that kind of build up of narrative mucus really defines the campus novel. It’s a deeply formulaic genre. And plenty of writers go back to it — especially these Gen X types — turning to a Proppian grabbag of pre-understood types and details because there seemingly can be no real original campus novel. The professors will be sad and outdated; the students will be pretentious, stupid, prodigious, bare basic flesh and bone; the campus is stuffy, the classes are useless and too specific, the social life is always sex and drugs, the poor kids want to be rich and the rich kids want to be poor, any education is not quite impressive education.
None of these things apparently ever need to be addressed or scrutinized because they already have been, or perhaps because they’re the kind of Dickensian simplicities that don’t really need any explaining at all. The campus novel might just be an extended, drawn-out version of the prototypical bildungsroman then, vague case studies of childhood and early adulthood for some search for meaning.
Maybe these authors never liked college, never liking it in an unserious comedic way, rather than disliking it in the melancholic mopey way that these same elements (idiots, sex, drugs, meaning) can become so important so long as they’re in any other setting. I suppose it would be silly to write at length about an experience you loved, but that’s a silly assumption in itself. I imagine if some fiction writers took the time to dissect what constitutes enjoyment or contentment, we might get somewhere more interesting.
So Jeffrey here pulls on these types over (to be sweet) maybe a third of the novel, whereafter he goes on some interesting, occasionally touching psychiatric or spiritual tangents. But he does so by actually using what makes (or can make) the campus novel interesting — the academic overlay. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of thing. The way Elif’s Idiot dissects language and linguistics, Donna’s Secret History with ancient Greek and Dionysian ritual (kind of), Awad’s Bunny and the horrific writing process. Their learning both influences and becomes a reflection of their growth (as a narrative and, diegetically, as characters). Madeleine here delves into the semiotic deconstruction of love, the marriage plot (wow!) in Victorian/Regency novels, both using it to understand her own life — and also being the thing which underhandedly directs the course of the actual plot itself. Jeffrey repeatedly, in that first third at Brown University (where he expects us to instinctively know the layout and look of the buildings without explanation), touches on this. The notion that we read things that then project meaning onto our forms of understanding. We read about the structure of the marriage plot here, and that causes us to read the novel, thereafter, as an example. Genuinely wonderful.
Jeffrey is probably a misogynist, and he grabbags a lot — a lot of name dropping and pointless details that always suggest that, for how much this kind of pretentious intelligence is scorned by the narrative, writers like him employ it prove otherwise, that they’re in the ‘know’ of all this junk, anyway. That first third really does what a campus novel needs to do, though. I need to think more on that bildungsroman idea, but I feel it stands. The campus novel, for professors and students in them alike, are extended coming of ages, where the finitude and temporality of the experience and place (the four years, the limited professorship, the confines of the quadrangle and campus surrounding) require meaning, meaning, meaning.
The last thirty pages of this book are also actually quite affecting.
All this to say, that kind of build up of narrative mucus really defines the campus novel. It’s a deeply formulaic genre. And plenty of writers go back to it — especially these Gen X types — turning to a Proppian grabbag of pre-understood types and details because there seemingly can be no real original campus novel. The professors will be sad and outdated; the students will be pretentious, stupid, prodigious, bare basic flesh and bone; the campus is stuffy, the classes are useless and too specific, the social life is always sex and drugs, the poor kids want to be rich and the rich kids want to be poor, any education is not quite impressive education.
None of these things apparently ever need to be addressed or scrutinized because they already have been, or perhaps because they’re the kind of Dickensian simplicities that don’t really need any explaining at all. The campus novel might just be an extended, drawn-out version of the prototypical bildungsroman then, vague case studies of childhood and early adulthood for some search for meaning.
Maybe these authors never liked college, never liking it in an unserious comedic way, rather than disliking it in the melancholic mopey way that these same elements (idiots, sex, drugs, meaning) can become so important so long as they’re in any other setting. I suppose it would be silly to write at length about an experience you loved, but that’s a silly assumption in itself. I imagine if some fiction writers took the time to dissect what constitutes enjoyment or contentment, we might get somewhere more interesting.
So Jeffrey here pulls on these types over (to be sweet) maybe a third of the novel, whereafter he goes on some interesting, occasionally touching psychiatric or spiritual tangents. But he does so by actually using what makes (or can make) the campus novel interesting — the academic overlay. I’ve always enjoyed that kind of thing. The way Elif’s Idiot dissects language and linguistics, Donna’s Secret History with ancient Greek and Dionysian ritual (kind of), Awad’s Bunny and the horrific writing process. Their learning both influences and becomes a reflection of their growth (as a narrative and, diegetically, as characters). Madeleine here delves into the semiotic deconstruction of love, the marriage plot (wow!) in Victorian/Regency novels, both using it to understand her own life — and also being the thing which underhandedly directs the course of the actual plot itself. Jeffrey repeatedly, in that first third at Brown University (where he expects us to instinctively know the layout and look of the buildings without explanation), touches on this. The notion that we read things that then project meaning onto our forms of understanding. We read about the structure of the marriage plot here, and that causes us to read the novel, thereafter, as an example. Genuinely wonderful.
Jeffrey is probably a misogynist, and he grabbags a lot — a lot of name dropping and pointless details that always suggest that, for how much this kind of pretentious intelligence is scorned by the narrative, writers like him employ it prove otherwise, that they’re in the ‘know’ of all this junk, anyway. That first third really does what a campus novel needs to do, though. I need to think more on that bildungsroman idea, but I feel it stands. The campus novel, for professors and students in them alike, are extended coming of ages, where the finitude and temporality of the experience and place (the four years, the limited professorship, the confines of the quadrangle and campus surrounding) require meaning, meaning, meaning.
The last thirty pages of this book are also actually quite affecting.
Mon coup de coeur lecture pour l'année 2015.
Après l'avoir démarré 2 fois, la 3e fois fut la bonne.
Je me suis plongée avec délectation dans l'histoire de Madeleine, et surtout dans le merveilleux style d'Eugenides.
Je voyais arriver la fin avec tristesse : j'en aurais bien repris 1 000 pages.
Le thème du "ménage à trois", banal, est revu ici avec des références, un style et des personnages merveilleusement travaillés.
C'est le roman à mettre entre toutes les mains de ceux qui arrivent perdus à l'âge adulte.
Après l'avoir démarré 2 fois, la 3e fois fut la bonne.
Je me suis plongée avec délectation dans l'histoire de Madeleine, et surtout dans le merveilleux style d'Eugenides.
Je voyais arriver la fin avec tristesse : j'en aurais bien repris 1 000 pages.
Le thème du "ménage à trois", banal, est revu ici avec des références, un style et des personnages merveilleusement travaillés.
C'est le roman à mettre entre toutes les mains de ceux qui arrivent perdus à l'âge adulte.
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Tässä on joko onnistunein tai epäonnistunein teoksen nimen käännös (alkup. Marriage Plot), en ole ihan vielä päättänyt kumpi. Tämä oli monitasoinen ja ajatuksiltaan rikas teos rakkaudesta, feminismistä, uskonnoista ja ihmissuhteista. Hahmot ja juoni alkoivat kuitenkin olla kiinnostavia vasta teoksen loppupuolella. Muutoinkin kerronta välillä takkusi, eikä vuosikymmenten takaisia amerikkalaisia kulttuuriviittauksia aina tajunnut. Diippiä, muttei niin viihdyttävää kuin olisin toivonut.
I agree with the majority of readers that the book can be a bit of a discouragement during the first 100 or so pages. But as I read on, I was impressed with the scope and breadth of Eugenides' writing. There is a lot to like in this book, although there is a lot that could have been better edited. Overall though, I found the journey of the narrative to be enjoyable, I admired how the characters developed and by the end of the book, I was glad to have read it.