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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Marriage Plot may have been set in the 1980s but I think the storyline is applicable to any decade. The whole, she loves him, he loves her, this guy is better for her but she doesn't realize it... you get the point. The book is not at all as trite as that sentence makes it sound though. I found it brought me back in my mind to my college years and how intensely I seemed to feel everything. Eugenides caught that feeling well without making me feel like the characters were immature for those feelings.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a doozy of a book. I think I'm glad I read it, but I have no interest in ever reading it again.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
john green for recent college graduates
I started this book back in 2016, also in audiobook form. I have never seen what this physical book looks like and somehow that is for the better. Listening to the same audiobook four years later brought me back to undergrad, which is fitting because I re-started this out of a sort of nostalgia for undergrad life even though my personal college experience was a 2.5/5 at best. I gave this book 3/5 stars. Mainly because after finishing the whole thing and listening to the supplementary interview, I finally got exactly what it was Eugenides was trying to do. Having never actually read a "marriage plot" book, the theme (which I know is supposed to be ironically deployed here) was a bit obscure to me when I first read this. I mean obviously "marriage plot" is pretty simple to understand but I didn't really *get* it until I got past the part I stopped at back in 2016 -- the parts where it's clear that Madeleine may actually marry Leonard or Mitchell. No spoilers.
I enjoyed Madeleine's parts the best, particularly at the very beginning because her form of white dysfunction was low stress to listen to and, despite its esoteria, I enjoyed falling asleep to her discuss these white men and their theories I have no interest in reading. I know a major critique of this book is that it's pompous and pretentious but if you just let the names wash over you it's not too bad. I also generally liked the book best when they were actually in college but probably because I was reading this due to my nostalgia for college. Madeleine as a character is pretty hard to read though. I'm not even sure what she looks like besides some vague reference to some actress I've never seen before. I know nothing about why she is doing certain things. I know she likes to read and that she's rich. She just felt a bit ghostly. If I hadn't met dozens of the same kind of white girls in college I would have absolutely no idea what to think of it her at all.
Where the book got a little boring for me were some of the parts with Mitchell and Leonard. I enjoyed Mitchell as a character even though I recognize he's a stock "nice guy" but this was fine to me because the whole part of him going to India to "achieve enlightenment" or whatever is exactly the kind of thing a middle class white nice guy would do. But I found some of his motivations to be the most confusing though. I understood that as a young person he was trying to find and do something meaningful with his life and used organized religion and white saviorism to do so but I could never quite connect that impulse to the obsession with Madeleine. It never hit home for me. Then there's Leonard. When I first read some of this back in 2016, I had no idea that Leonard was going to be the other part of the love triangle. Part of this felt inappropriate as the way that he appeared in the novel felt so random that it couldn't be justified to make him a full character. I enjoyed that Eugenides went out of his way to describe Leonard's origins and his background although at times this felt discordant with the new Leonard (perhaps that's the point). I believe the parts describing Leonard's manic depression/bipolar disorder were well written but I would be curious about what people who actually have this and similar illnesses would say about how it was illustrated. Outside of that, I found Leonard's character arch to be the most surprising, one of the main parts that was unpredictable about the novel.
All in all, I am glad I finally finished this after all these years. It satisfied an itch I needed to scratch in terms of college nostalgia and white dysfunction plots. It's pretty long so unless you have some profound interest in the marriage plot, white dysfunction, elite colleges or love triangles I would not prioritize it.
I enjoyed Madeleine's parts the best, particularly at the very beginning because her form of white dysfunction was low stress to listen to and, despite its esoteria, I enjoyed falling asleep to her discuss these white men and their theories I have no interest in reading. I know a major critique of this book is that it's pompous and pretentious but if you just let the names wash over you it's not too bad. I also generally liked the book best when they were actually in college but probably because I was reading this due to my nostalgia for college. Madeleine as a character is pretty hard to read though. I'm not even sure what she looks like besides some vague reference to some actress I've never seen before. I know nothing about why she is doing certain things. I know she likes to read and that she's rich. She just felt a bit ghostly. If I hadn't met dozens of the same kind of white girls in college I would have absolutely no idea what to think of it her at all.
Where the book got a little boring for me were some of the parts with Mitchell and Leonard. I enjoyed Mitchell as a character even though I recognize he's a stock "nice guy" but this was fine to me because the whole part of him going to India to "achieve enlightenment" or whatever is exactly the kind of thing a middle class white nice guy would do. But I found some of his motivations to be the most confusing though. I understood that as a young person he was trying to find and do something meaningful with his life and used organized religion and white saviorism to do so but I could never quite connect that impulse to the obsession with Madeleine. It never hit home for me. Then there's Leonard. When I first read some of this back in 2016, I had no idea that Leonard was going to be the other part of the love triangle. Part of this felt inappropriate as the way that he appeared in the novel felt so random that it couldn't be justified to make him a full character. I enjoyed that Eugenides went out of his way to describe Leonard's origins and his background although at times this felt discordant with the new Leonard (perhaps that's the point). I believe the parts describing Leonard's manic depression/bipolar disorder were well written but I would be curious about what people who actually have this and similar illnesses would say about how it was illustrated. Outside of that, I found Leonard's character arch to be the most surprising, one of the main parts that was unpredictable about the novel.
All in all, I am glad I finally finished this after all these years. It satisfied an itch I needed to scratch in terms of college nostalgia and white dysfunction plots. It's pretty long so unless you have some profound interest in the marriage plot, white dysfunction, elite colleges or love triangles I would not prioritize it.