Give me books, fruit, french wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors. --John Keats

Sunday, March 20, 2022

"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!

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