Read Me! THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides – Recommended Reading

Jeffrey Eugenides is one of those writers who takes his time writing books, and it shows.  His first book was The Virgin Suicides, a creepy and sad little story set in the 70’s that was made into an extremely creepy and sad movie.  His second book, Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003, and is still one of my favorite books.  The Marriage Plot is only his third book in eighteen years, and although I want to rush right out and buy it so I can start reading right away, I also want to delay the moment, because I suspect it will be awhile before his next book is ready to publish. 

Here’s a short description from Amazon:  “Even among authors, Jeffrey Eugenides possesses a rare talent for being able to inhabit his characters. In The Marriage Plot, his third novel and first in ten years, Eugenides describes a year or so in the lives of three college seniors at Brown in the early 80s. There is Madeleine, a self-described “incurable romantic” who is slightly embarrassed at being so normal. There is Leonard, a brilliant, temperamental student from the Pacific Northwest. And completing the triangle is Mitchell, a Religious Studies major from Eugenides’ own Detroit. What follows is a book delivered in sincere and genuine prose, tracing the end of the students’ college days and continuing into those first, tentative steps toward true adulthood. This is a thoughtful and at times disarming novel about life, love, and discovery, set during a time when so much of life seems filled with deep portent.” –Chris Schluep