Details Books Conducive To The Marriage Plot
| Original Title: | The Marriage Plot |
| ISBN: | 0374203059 (ISBN13: 9780374203054) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Madeleine Hanna, Leonard Bankhead, Mitchell Grammaticus |
| Literary Awards: | Indies Choice Book Award for Adult Fiction (2012), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (2011), Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2012), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2011), Grand prix de l'héroïne Madame Figaro for Roman étranger (2013) |
Jeffrey Eugenides
Hardcover | Pages: 406 pages Rating: 3.44 | 109916 Users | 11334 Reviews
Particularize About Books The Marriage Plot
| Title | : | The Marriage Plot |
| Author | : | Jeffrey Eugenides |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 406 pages |
| Published | : | October 11th 2011 by Farrar Straus Giroux |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Contemporary. Literary Fiction. Romance. Novels. Audiobook. Literature |
Explanation During Books The Marriage Plot
It's the early 1980s - the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to the Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.Rating About Books The Marriage Plot
Ratings: 3.44 From 109916 Users | 11334 ReviewsAppraise About Books The Marriage Plot
Definitely inferior to his two earlier bestsellers, The Virgin Suicides (4 stars) and Middlesex (3 stars) but I still liked this. It is still has that tongue-in-cheek, contemporary satirist prose of Eugenides. His playful words, the effective use of settings to heighten his scenes, his easy tone and light (generally) mood are all in this book. The revelation in the end is not as shocking as Virgin and there is no overbearingly strange character like the hermaphrodites in Middlesex here. However,I am trying to decide if I really liked this book so much because I really liked it so much, or if I really liked it because it made me feel smart without really having to do anything. I fear it is the latter, but check back with me later on that. That said, the story is about the relationship between Mitchell who loves Madeleine who loves Leonard. I never figured out who Leonard loves. It's basically an intellectualized, sort of depressing rom-com, if that even makes any sense.
The first part of this novel examines (in a manner both accurate and funny) the big fuss over deconstruction back in the day of 80's academia. And then it goes on to actually deconstruct the traditional marriage plot via the "discourses" of religion, philosophy, and lit crit. However, this is not a cold novel of ideas; au contraire, JE creates a moving love triangle formed by three smart, lively 20-somethings as they navigate the post-college recession and discover the "real world" with its
Ugh. This novel is asinine. It follows a group of pretentious people going around and being pretentious while talking about pretentious things and generally trying to get a reaction from my gag reflex. I mean at one point a character just takes "Finnegans Wake" out of their pocket, I mean seriously. I feel like the main point of this novel is just Eugenides shouting, "look how many books I've read!". It's rubbish of the highest degree. It also manages to be worse than Eugenides' other waste of
I'm convinced this is what happens if you combine a Whit Stillman script, Franny and Zooey, and a whole lot of beige. There's some beautiful writing here, unfortunately there's equally lot of bland writing. It doesn't help that the characters are dull either. At times, I couldn't believe that this was nine years in the making...yet at the same time I could. Let's just say the writing has a certain over-wrought feel to it.Madeleine, the main heroine is a snooze. She's basically a stock dream girl
Pretentious. I try to stay away from this word reviewing books, because too many of my favorites literary novels have been called that and it hurt. But The Marriage Plot is pretentious. And also pompous, elitist, privileged and self-important.I just can't quite believe that the author who managed to make stories of 5 suicidal girls and a Greek hermaphrodite so compelling, could come up with something like The Marriage Plot and think it a worthy tale to tell. A rich, freshly graduated from
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