"The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides

This book was kind of depressing. It's the 80s, and Madeleine Hanna is graduating from Brown University. She's in love with (but no longer together with) Leonard Bankhead, and Mitchell Grammaticus (what the heck kind of last name is that?) is in love with Madeleine. No one really knows what they're going to do with their lives, but this turns out to be especially true for Leonard, since he stopped taking his lithium and ended up in a mental hospital. In other words, if a love triangle weren't bad enough, let's throw a little bipolar disorder into the mix and see just exactly how bad it can get. (Turns out that's bad enough to make me focus on how lucky I am that neither I nor any of my loved ones have had to deal with extreme mania or life-pausing depression.)

I don't think I really enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't boring, and there's nothing wrong with the writing, except I didn't like the voice. It started out with a kind of la-di-dah tone. As time went by I decided the problem was that I just didn't like Madeleine. And the ending felt forced. 

Other than that, it was great!

"Commonwealth" by Ann Patchett

I love a book I can sink into, with a deep velvety story and writing so good you hardly even notice it. 

Commonwealth, I think, is slightly autobiographical. I know from reading Patchett's non-fiction that she lived in California with her cop dad and beautiful mother until her parents split up and she moved a couple thousand miles away with her new stepfamily. That may be where the similarity between the story and her life ends, but it's enough to bring an immediacy or a vibrance to the book. 

The story centers on Franny (who I almost called Ann! Oops!) and her relationships with her sister and stepsiblings, though more tangential bonds are also explored. The plot is one I'm having real trouble with describing concisely and I feel like all I can say is that throughout the book we see the children grow and change, and their interactions grow and change along with them. What I most want to remember about this book, though, is how much I enjoyed the reading experience.