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    The Marriage Plot
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    The Marriage Plot
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    The Marriage Plot
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Marriage Plot

    Written by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Narrated by David Pittu

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    “There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.” Anthony Trollope

    It’s the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to 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 studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead – charismatic loner and college Darwinist – suddenly turns up in a 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 spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they have learned. 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateOct 11, 2011
    ISBN9780007443093
    Unavailable
    The Marriage Plot
    Author

    Jeffrey Eugenides

    Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of three novels. His first, The Virgin Suicides (1993), is now considered a modern classic. Middlesex (2002) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and both Middlesex and The Marriage Plot (2011) were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Fresh Complaint, a collection of short stories, was published in 2017. He is a member both of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and The American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

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    Reviews for The Marriage Plot

    3.5/5

    122 ratings99 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Read ~ 100 pages. I'm done reading it, although technically I'm not going to finish reading it. My time is too valuable to spend reading a book that doesn't "grab" me.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I was thoroughly enjoying the story until Eugenides incorrectly uses the title "Seeds of Temptation" for a Thomas Merton book that Mitchel brings along only to discover that there is also a factual error of the same sort in the printed version of the book. Such a mistake seems unprofessional on the part of both the publisher and the writer.

      That being said, it's been something like 7 years since Middlesex was in paperback and since I read it so I don't exactly remember what I loved so much about it. This was an enjoyable and easy book and of course saddens me so much being a happily married woman (a Stage 2?). I found myself remembering my own days of Undergrad and what it was like to be newly in love with my now husband.

      A good read especially if you were an English Major in College.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Okay this was a serious, straight up adult literary book and I didn't hate it! The writing is of course superb although at times gets weighted down with a few too many intellectual fancy-pants references. The story, what there was, was compacted, complex and oddly satisfying. The characters too were complex and messed up and crazy and absurd and quite honestly lovely. The time period, early 80's was always well done. Good narrator too. I enjoyed it for sure.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Not having read Middlesex (yet), I had nothing no reference points for The Marriage Plot. Luckily, the author has woven hundreds of profound, provocative, and downright hilarious references through the text himself.

      I can't think of any other 'campus novel' where I've had the feeling of being in the company of characters who seemed not just believable, but believably clever. Eugenides manages to capture that intoxicating sense of being in one's intellectual prime without once patronising the reader. If you like jokes about semiotics and theology, then this one is for you. If you know nothing about semiotics and/or theology but are interested in being delighted by the ironies of both, this is still the one for you, as you will find everything you need effortlessly slipped into place for you.

      But the real strength of the novel, to my mind, is the unflinching emotional core. Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard never let the fact that they are clever get in the way of making mistakes, which makes them so endearing to be around. I finished the book a few days ago and am still waking up missing these characters in the morning.

      Thoroughly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Didn't like this nearly as much as I thought I would. There was quite a lot of talking about literature and theory as well as criticism so one would think I would devour it. This was so not the case, it was rather dry and the characters were not very likable and did an awful lot of whining. So tired of the elusive Leonard and his deep intellectual thoughts and the pining, whining Madeline.
    • 3/5
      The parts of this book that I liked best--references to literary theory--were sadly minor as Eugenides focused the action away from the intellectual challenges of college and toward post-graduation relationship angst and religious experimentation. I found none of the characters particularly appealing, which always makes it difficult for me to remain invested in a book even when its ideas are compelling. The resolution felt abrupt after the extensive detail given to Mitchell's Indian sojourn. In fact, although the book began with Madeleine and hinges on her romantic decision-making, it seemed most sympathetic to Mitchell, to the extent that returning to either of the other primary characters, while necessary, was somewhat jarring.

      There were, however, many lines which made me nod my head and smile wryly, such as: "Since Derrida claimed that language, by its very nature, undermined any meaning it attempted to promote, Madeleine wondered how Derrida expected her to get his meaning." Perhaps the vagueness of the ending is meant to signify the invalidity of the "Marriage Plot" construct--there is no tidy, happy ending, only a hesitant optimism. I find myself wanting to read Derrida, and Cixous, and think about language and philosophy, and that in itself makes this book a worthwhile read.
    • 4/5
      In the Regency and Victorian periods, English novels usually had a "marriage plot", in which the heroine dealt with choosing between marrying one of two men, each having different personality characteristics. This book is an update and a deconstruction that type of plot.

      There's a love triangle, in which Madeleine, a lit major, chooses between Mitchell, a soul-searching religious studies major, and Leonard, a troubled biology major. The action takes place in the early eighties (why Eugenides chose to set it then I haven't figured out yet, but I was pleased, because that made the characters my contemporaries).

      All of the characters are well-read and intelligent. Plenty of books are discussed and name-dropped. Whenever I expected someone to be a cliche, or a "type", I was put in my place by Eugenides' insight and mastery of characterization. I would recommend this book to any bibliophile who enjoys a good exploration of the human heart (a love story, in other words). But don't read it if you're one of those romance buffs who expects a happily-ever-after ending. This book is much more nuanced than that, and takes into consideration that just because people love one another, it doesn't necessarily mean they should spend their lives together.

      This book, for the most part, tells a smaller-scale story than "Middlesex", except for a section where Mitchell, in his trip to India, contemplates some larger questions and comes to know himself better. I found Mitchell Grammaticus to be one of the most engaging characters I've read about this year.

      This is a book that I may come back to one day, and I don't say that lightly.
    • 4/5
      A very smart book that combines a present-day reworking of a Victorian novel plot with some elements of post-modern literature. The three main characters in the central triangle are all interesting and very well developed. I particularly liked Mitchell's character but found Madeleine hard to understand/empathize with. It has fantastic, beautiful moments and other moments that just broke my heart for how beautiful and sincere and raw they were and the ending note worked really well in my opinion. A little enlightenment and understanding is just what these people needed. In short, I truly liked it very much but Middlesex is still my favorite novel of his.
    • 3/5
      This was a surprisingly quick read, despite the length. It drew me in and kept me engaged. In the end, I wouldn't say this will be a favorite, but it's worth checking out.
    • 3/5
      Audiobook...........Frankly I was disappointed in this novel. The plot is a moderately creative coming-of-age tale. It is okay, but I guess "Middlesex" was a tough act to follow, even for Eugenides. The one idea that I found to be really interesting was to consider the question, would people fall in love if they hadn't already read about it? How would life be different? The three protagonists, Madelaine, Leonard, and Mitchell were interesting, yet not riveting. So, in summary, perhaps I would have enjoyed this more if my expectations had not been so high when I started it.
    • 3/5
      This was a good story but just not anywhere near as wonderful as Middlesex. 8/5
    • 3/5
      First let me say the I enjoyed Eugenides Pulitzer Prize winner Middlesex but this is not that book. When I first started into it I thought - This is like Phillip Roth without the sex. (Maybe it could have used some.) This is essentially a lovers triangle book but the problem is you will scratch your head trying to figure out what they find attractive about each other. Madeleine is the object of attention of two men that have enough baggage to fill a freight train. The only "normal" people are Maggie's parents (somewhat) and all the minor characters in the book. There is way to much introspection and angst and you wonder why they just don't move on in their lives. The actual dialogue and writing is fine but the characters I would run away from if I saw them in public..
    • 5/5
      Although I was a math major in college, and never have understood others' fascination with Jane Austen, etal, I was able to follow this story pretty well. I'm sure I missed many literary allusions, but that does not spoil the story. Set in the early 80's (just as I had finished grad school) at Brown University in Rhode Island, and then in Cape Cod and New York, the story follows the coming of age angst of Madeleine Hanna who is completing her senior thesis on the Marriage Plot theme prominent in the novels of Jane Austen and George Eliot. In the meantime, she becomes involved with Leonard Bankhead, a Darwinist from the west coast, and at the same time develops an intellectual relationship with a semiotics classmate Mitchell Grammaticus who thinks that Madeleine is his destined mate.As Mitchell travels to Europe, India and Asia between senior year and graduate school, Maddy and Leonard move to Cape Cod so he can pursue a research fellowship. At the same time, Leonard also develops a full blown case of manic depression.This could have been an awful book with disparate pieces floating all over the place. Instead, Eugenides keeps all the players and their stories tied together, interesting, and ultimately brings us to a conclusion we should have seen coming, but in my case at least, we didn't. The references to places, music, literature, history, politics of the era made this one easy for me to relate to, but are also clear enough for younger readers to understand.While the setting and the plot are well developed, this is truly a character driven work. The expansion of the three main characters is done with precision and insight. We don't understand Maddy, because she doesn't really understand herself. We feel great pain for Leonard's mental illness (and for Maddy's inability to deal with it). Several times I asked myself if medical science hasn't come further along in treatment of bipolar disorder than what was portrayed in the setting 30 years ago. Mitchell's seemingly unorganized ramble through Europe and India seems out of character with his professed desire to enter divinity school, but does give us an excellent picture of the state of his brain and his emotions.The reader can take this at several levels: as the plain and simple story of three mixed up college graduates with too much learning, and too little grip on the reality of adulthood and the need to settle down and take care of themselves; or one can read this as a very complex mimicry of the 19th century English novels where women and men were meant to be paired for life (at least I think that's what the Marriage Plot is - never could read Austen, nor have I ever read Eliot). Eugenides' genius seems to be in creating a story that can be enjoyed by readers coming from either level.I certainly enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. The audio was exceptionally well done. David Pittu manages to give each character a distinct voice, and his clear enunciation helps us to understand at least the words if not the literary concepts presented. I can't compare it to Eugenides' previous works, but this one is definitely a winner.
    • 2/5
      The book's been falsely advertised as being about literary theory, a defense of the plot-driven novel against the abstraction of an idea of literary theory that is at least twenty-five years out of date (though admittedly it clings on in some departments), but it's really not. It's actually just a boring book with boring characters who act out a boring plot that is a struggle to muster much interest for. It wasn't that the characters were unlikeable. That's giving them too much credit. It is that each of the three protagonists were so profoundly uninteresting, each in his or her own way, and the supporting characters no better. You can't even really dislike any of them. They're just so shallow and predictable that there's nothing to dislike. You just can't muster enough enthusiasm to dislike any of them. There's not enough here for that. It's just not a good book.
    • 3/5
      A novel about the first 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 who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And completing the triangle is Mitchell, a Religious Studies major. Madeleine loves Leonard, but her family dislikes him. Mitchell loves Madeleine and Madeleine's family loves him. Leonard is out of control.
    • 3/5
      Good, but not great. Perhaps not even *that* good, despite the fact that Eugenides is clearly a skilled writer. I enjoyed the first half a lot, however much of that might be down to the fact that I was a student at Brown in 1982 which is the year the characters all graduated. I knew people like them, I had a close friend with bipolar disorder, I went to the same sort of parties they did, I ate at the Ratty, I hung out in the Blue Room ... it all rang very true. But after that section of the book, things sort of went downhill. Although I *really* wanted to like Mitchell, I wasn't particularly interested in his religious quest, and when it all amounted to nothing anyway, I had a bit of a "Why bother?" moment. It wasn't my only one. Nothing ever seemed to get resolved, and perhaps that should be OK (reflecting real life) but at the same time it all left me feeling empty and wanting more. Unlike writers of some of the other reviews I've read, I did understand what drew Madeleine/Leonard and Mitchell/Madeleine to each other, but that still wasn't enough for me as a reader. Perhaps people aged 22 or 23 just aren't all that interesting.
    • 4/5
      It's about a woman, Madeleine who is just about to graduate from Princeton. Her major is literature and she loves 19th century books like Austen and Bronte. Many of these books have the classic marraige plot, where the ultimate goal of the female characters is to be married. Her own lovelife is a lot bumpier. She is in love with unstable manic depressive Leonard. Another friend, Mitchell is in love with her. We are taken through her relationship with both men as seen from all three perspectives, as well as Mitchell's travels post-graduation, during which he always has Madeleine as a constant in his thoughts and dreams. The plot sometimes backtracks to view the history of a different character that sometimes overlaps events we've already seen from the POV of one of the others but it's interesting to see the different perspectives on the same events. I liked the book, it's well written and the characters are very believable. It kept me interested. I like this author and this is the second book by him that i've read and liked.
    • 4/5
      People tend to define themselves by their relationships when they're young, and these characters are no exception despite the worldly wisdom they all seem to possess. This book had a stronger feminist message than I expected, but maybe that's just what college was like in the 80s. I could not put this book down.
    • 3/5
      I agree with other reviewers that this was not as good as "Middlesex," however, I still enjoyed it, perhaps because I related to the character of Madeleine. Although I didn't share her privileged upbringing, I could understand her confused ambitions, her susceptibility to Leonard, her ambiguity to Mitchell, her close yet sometimes tense relations with her family, and her literary interests. It has to be difficult to follow something as epic as "Middlesex," and this novel surely won't be every reader's taste. It's a character-driven novel, which usually means a reader has to find at least one of the main characters compelling to stay engaged.
    • 4/5
      Smashing characters. Developed beautifully within the story. Created a believable and highly desired ending!
    • 2/5
      Seriously overrated. After all the hype, I expected something unusual and outstanding, but instead was bored.
    • 4/5
      The author is exceptional in capturing the feel of college life in the 1980's with all of those interconnected relationships between friends, lovers and roommates. The story and the setting brought back memories of the heady days of college and the anxiety of life after graduation. The exuberance and haunting tragedy of Leonard’s character with his onset of mental illness was created with sensitivity and provided insight into the complexity of manic depression and the impact on young relationships. Well done.
    • 4/5
      Well, it isn’t Middlesex, but it isn’t bad either. I was worried about reading this book after falling in love with Middlesex, but I shouldn’t have worried. Eugenides can write! This book just isn’t as brilliant, strange and amazing as Middlesex. It is a quieter book but much more relatable (especially if you went to college in the 1980s). Essentially, it is about a love triangle between three recent Brown graduates, Madeline, Leonard and Mitchell. As with most young women in their early 20s, Madeline picks the guy who is mysterious and brooding and not so good for her. (Lord knows I did the same thing at that age.) All the relationships develop in ways that felt satisfying and real. Plus you get the joys of reading Eugenides’s prose.
    • 3/5
      The reader David Pittu is talented, but his campy reading of the female voices goes beyond social commentary into the territory of ridicule.
    • 5/5
      Oh, Mr. Eugenides, you are good. Just as I did his other two novels, I LOVED this book. It's not perfect, but it is such a pleasure to read. Very entertaining and involved. Just the right amount of literary snark and intellectualism. He's excellent. I can't wait for his next book.
    • 4/5
      The Marriage Plot is more clearly autobiographical than Middlesex, with careful 1980s references: descriptions of genetics at the time match my undergraduate memories. I found the portrayal of manic depression and the long-suffering partner moving, and the satire of theory-ridden English classes hilarious, but other readers might not.
    • 4/5
      In the spring of 1982, Madeline (Maddie) Hanna is about to graduate from Brown University with a degree in English literature. She has been especially drawn to the writing of Austen, Eliot, and James, with their novels based on “marriage plots.” Also graduating is Mitchell Grammaticus, a religious studies major who plans to seek enlightenment—or at least a short-term research job—in India. Maddie and Mitchell dated briefly as sophomores, but she broke up with him because he wanted a more serious relationship than she was ready for. Mitchell still pines after Maddie, while she is in love with Leonard Bankhead, a brilliant but seriously disturbed physics major who is also graduating and with whom Maddie had an intense fling during the winter of their senior year.“The Marriage Plot” traces the lives of Maddie, Mitchell, and Leonard through the years just following graduation. The books addresses big themes, one of which is the difficulty of finding one’s way in the world, even for young adults who, with a degree from an Ivy League university, would appear to have it made. Mitchell tries—and fails spectacularly—to find grace while serving at Mother Teresa’s Missionary of Charity in Calcutta. Maddie tries, and fails, to play the role of supportive wife to Leonard, who in turn struggles and fails to capitalize on his scientific genius while coping with manic-depression.Another theme of “The Marriage Plot” is the parallel between religiosity and insanity. In a particularly explicit example of this, while traveling in India, Mitchell meets a devotee of the spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who tells him, matter-of-factly, that “[p]eople levitate.” Much later, after Mitchell has returned to the US and has run into Maddie and Leonard at a party in New York, Leonard, now seriously depressed, describes to Mitchell an experience he had in Europe on his honeymoon, where he “was looking up into the starry sky when suddenly he had the feeling that he could lift off into space, if he wanted to, [and] as soon as the idea occurred to him, it . . . happened: he was suddenly in space, floating past the planet Saturn.”A third theme involves perspectives on class and wealth. Eugenides depicts the contrast between upper and working class Americans (Maddie and Mitchell), and then puts it in context by depicting the difference between Mitchell and the extremely poor residents of Calcutta he meets.“The Marriage Plot” is very well written: Maddie is certainly channeling Eugenides when she says that “a writer should work harder writing a book than [the reader does} reading it.” But in the end, “The Marriage Plot” is not wholly satisfying. In contrast to “Middlesex,” which had an expansive story spanning decades and history that impacted millions of people, “The Marriage Plot” at times feel claustrophobic. Perhaps that’s because the three main characters are each experiencing their own forms of claustrophobia: Mitchell unable to escape the bounds of his corporeality to achieve the enlightenment he so seeks, Maddie unable to escape the bounds of a bad marriage, and Leonard unable to escape the bounds of his broken mind.
    • 4/5
      I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this book. It was like a big hot fudge sundae for anyone who has ever been a lovesick, confused English (or Religious Studies) major. My only quibble is that Eugenides throws in a bunch of great period details, but considering the chronology of the characters' undergraduate years and the year or so following graduation, I think some of them may be in the wrong place and slightly anachronistic. I'd love for another reader to prove me wrong, though, so I can upgrade this review to five stars.
    • 1/5
      First off, I really hated MIDDLESEX (horrifyingly binary ideas about gender, location of intersex bodies' origin in incest, etc), so I was predisposed to dislike THE MARRIAGE PLOT.

      I read it anyway because I love Barthes' A LOVER'S DISCOURSE and because the novel sounded like it might be critical in an interesting way of the elite liberal arts college industrial complex, or at least a fun romp through a cultural moment. But no.

      Again I found Eugenides basic worldview repellant, uninteresting, and badly observed. I don't trust his depiction of straight women and am bored by his depiction of straight men. The story is about a heterosexual love triangle and the woman operates pretty exclusively as an object to bring the men together (I'm thinking of Sedgwick's BETWEEN MEN here). On a very basic level, this novel doesn't pass the Bechdel test. And there's weird class stuff, all this unexamined privilege. I just really dislike and distrust Eugenides's authorial worldview and I also didn't think it was particularly well-written or plotted. I mean, the writing was *fine* but really not special to me.
    • 3/5
      Reading this book was an immensely frustrating experience. I can't deny that it gave me long periods of real enjoyment -- the basic readerly pleasure of being interested in these characters and what happens to them. The narrative voice was also plenty engaging, evoking the intelligence and ironic wit of 19th century novels. But ultimately, that's all this is -- a mild 19th century-style coming of age drama, superficially updated for our era. The nods to continental theory in the opening pages never amount to more than that, and the story never really asks a deeper question than "which one will she marry?" And while the ending appears to be reaching for some kind of vaguely feminist answer to the question, it fails infuriatingly. I can't help wishing I'd reread Jane Austen instead.