The Marriage Plot

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 Brown, Eng [...]

Masterful on many levels At first I wasn t drawn to any of the three characters in the love triangle Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell Each seemed deeply flawed, and they are Except you read along and find that Eugenides thinks we all are, just as deeply in our unique ways, and are none the lesser for it That s the way people are, and the way life goes We stumble through it, thinking we are somehow in control, and it s what happens nevertheless while we are furiously busy making other plans, or s [...]

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 makingt 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 to quote [...]

While there are passages that are beautiful in only the way Eugenides can write, they act like flashes of brilliance in an otherwise dull and lazy novel.The first part of the book shoves Semiotics into your brain and reads like the most terrible and awkwardly pretentious college courses that no one should ever have to suffer And throughout it all, I kept feeling like this book was only for English majors and maybe Philosophy majors , and had an agenda that did not involve telling a good story A [...]

The experience was like plowing through late James, or the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karenina , until you suddenly got to a good part again, which kept on getting better and better until you were so enthralled that you were almost grateful for the previous dull stretch because it increased your eventual pleasure But this particular novel, thank goodness, isn t at all like this Its thoroughly affecting and modern, smart and hella funny it has very few of those moments of nothingness, of [...]

I loved The Virgin Suicides for its style, imagery and voice I loved Middlesex for its epic storytelling, its characters and a lyrical flight of fancy near the end that I think I ll never forget Because of the lofty standards the author s previous works set for me perhaps it is inevitable, despite the trademark humor and intelligence evident in this novel too, that this one couldn t live up to the others Perhaps it s just that the elements I liked in this novel didn t add up to a cohesive whole [...]

Onvan The Marriage Plot Nevisande Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN 374203059 ISBN13 9780374203054 Dar 406 Safhe Saal e Chap 2011

3 stars to Jeffrey Eugenides s The Marriage Plot My book club selected this a few years ago, given they had all previously read Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides before I joined I ve since moved and not with that book club any, but I keep in touch with many of them I hadn t read either book, but I did watch the movie The Virgin Suicides and I drove through a town called Middlesex in NJ, whenever I would go back and forth to college in Pennsylvania I suppose that doesn t count for much, nor do I [...]

I d loved the author s tour de forceMiddlesex and had recently worked through his anthology of short stories,Fresh Complaint, where I came across a tale that really interested me well, in truth, it spooked me a little too The story, written in 1996, is called Air Mail and it concerns a young man called Mitchell who is suffering badly from a bout of diarrhoea whilst temporarily staying at a remote beach in Thailand The ending of the story is ambiguous did he just die I just didn t know, and it pl [...]

Okay, fine, Jeffrey, you win You made me care about these twenty something white college kids despite myself Setting certain crucial sections in a the psych unit and b a hospice in India was probably what saved you, as well as a loopy last five pages accellerando during which you niftily dump the marriage plot device on its head Also some unvarnished sex scenes and than one wincingly convincing young couple argument But you know what I still hold you to those first 200 pages of REALLY shameless [...]

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.

Kafka said, A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us Stories that bore holes, blasting through the ice and earth rather than piling on top of a parched, idle field, has the capacity to alter the reader, produce a chemical reaction and transgress the space that has already been traversed.Eugenides revolutionary novel THE VIRGIN SUICIDES blew the dust off the languid spines of literature shelves and, although the context wasn t new suburbia, Baby Boom generation , his Greek chorus of n [...]

It s hard to follow Middlesex Practically anything that came from Jeffrey Eugenides pen or computer or whatever was going to pale in comparison And indeed, this isn t as good as Middlesex But don t mistake that for not being good The Marriage Plot may not reach those lofty heights, but it s still a solid read.Note The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in policy and enforcement You can read why I came to this decision here.In the meantime, you can read the entire re [...]

I only finished a quarter of this book before I had to return it to the library express check out I think it should have been called The Marriage Plop Granted, I m no literary genius, just some schmuck with a science degree, so I don t get all the references, but beyond that I found each character hideously irritating and didn t really care how the story progressed or ended The book club consensus was as follows Some of us liked it, most of us didn t, but EVERYONE was disappointed.

For anyone who has attended college, this will make you think of those days the exams, lectures, life on campus, study, relationships, parties etc The stress of preparing a senior thesiskes me exhausted just to remember it The scope of this novel is wide While I loved this novel, I found writing a review is tough because it s a story of many parts coming of age, a love triangle, college life, drama, privileged underprivileged students , manic depression, travel, religion This is all expressed wi [...]

Having been a big fan of Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, it s needless to say that his latest, The Marriage Plot, immediately went on my virtual to read list But despite making many a year end best of list and literary award nominated, it almost as quickly tumbled down my list as heard very mixed things about it including the inevitable not as good as Middlesex It only made it back up my list when it was announced as one of the 1 seeds in the Tournament of Books competition I am glad it did Despite [...]

To compare this to Middlesex is a mistake akin to comparing grand opera to an intimate chamber piece This book succeeds because it takes the structure and theme of a nineteenth century novel and turns them upside down The love triangle which drives the plot reminds me of the Freudian view of self.At its core is Madeleine ego , who has spent her time consuming stories about love without absorbing their lessons about life She falls hard for Leonard id and enters into a permanent relationship with [...]

This was the first book that I read in my first house I bought late last year I saw Eugenides one of my favorite authors ever speak and received an autographed copy, which had a dust jacket that my dog Franny chewed his face from I loved the Fresh Air interview where he spoke about this book, as well And I had been waiting for this book for soOOOoo long I was VERY excited to read it once it was finally in my hands.This book was a major letdown, truth be told I really love and admire The Virgin S [...]

BookFiendUSA So, how was it My GR friends reviews are all over the place on this one How does it compare to Virgin Suicides or Middlesex SandyBanks1971 It s OK Not badly written at all, but nothing incredible either I can t compare it with Eugenides earlier works, as I have never read anything by him before.BookFiendUSA Seriously You ve never even seen the Sofia Coppola movie SandyBanks1971 Nope But I ve read the synopses of the earlier books, and I can tell you that there are absolutely no virg [...]

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I am enjoying the marriage plot Set in a college town in the Eighties, it appeals to those of us who majored in literature or did post grad studies Madeleine s love life is often hilarious, sometimes sad Eugenideswrites great satire Here is an excerpt Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty handed after jogging with hand weights What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel There were going to be people [...]

I m afraid that I don t know enough about the old marriage plot novels Austen, Elliot, James, etc that this one references to really get everything Eugenides is trying to do here For example, I initially found Madeline to be fairly thinly rendered in comparison to the fully fleshed out intellectual and emotional lives of her male counterparts, but by the end I thought that might be part of the point ie that she exists on the page only as an ideal mirrors the way she exists to her suitors There [...]

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, something [...]

Having loved Middlesex so much, I m having troubles talking about this book I think I understand that Eugey was going for something toying with old conventions used in the Victorian Austen era He puts enough literary history theory in here to fell a horse, and with this, I think he s saying, Just want to make you aware that I KNOW that this is unoriginal He titled this book The Marriage Plot in reference to the well known plot structure in which a beautiful young woman must choose between two su [...]

I love Jeffrey Eugenides In just the few pages I ve read, I can tell this is a book to savior sip the juices of Jeffrey s beautiful writing slowly I m excited reading this book reading each sentence turning each page lights a fire in me I already don t want this story to end and I still have most of the book to read Madeleine Hanna is the main protagonistShe is in love with LeonardMitchell is in love with herBack to Semiotics class 211 English is what people major in College who don t know what [...]

It is books like this one that make me weep for humanity What went wrong Eugenides Well, everything I do not think I have ever read a pretentious book in all of my life It is filled with pretensions people that do nothing but be pretentious, and this is coming from a self proclaimed pretentious person that loves pretentious books, I am offended I don t hate the guy, I loved Middlesex, and liked The Virgin suicides, but this book drove me into the schism It did have some good moments, but they w [...]

Though I have been a bookseller for years than I m willing to confess, I have somehow never read Jeffrey Eugenides, despite his Pulitzer Prize and the fact that The Virgin Suicides is the favorite novel of one of my favorite sales reps shout out to Michael Kindness It s not that I was actively not reading Eugenides I just hadn t gotten around to it yet Enter his new book this October from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux called The Marriage Plot, which my bookstore is considering for its signed First [...]

A discussion of this book with my wife leads me to believe that I am the only person in the world who didn t know plot spoiler that one of the three main characters is a manic depressive headkerchief wearing philosopher scientist who chews chewing tobacco and is both found irresistible by women and also looks like sasquatch, i.e one of the three major characters is David Foster Wallace For the first two thirds of the book I was excited to see what Jeffrey would make DFW do what weird Freudian li [...]

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 subsequent he [...]

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 paper, The Vi [...]