The Marriage Plot

By: Jeffrey Eugenides

Narrated by: David Pittu

Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

A New York Times Notable Book of 2011

A Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Book of 2011

A Kirkus Reviews Top 25 Best Fiction of 2011 Title

One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2011

A Salon Best Fiction of 2011 title

One of The Telegraph's Best Fiction Books of the Year 2011

It's the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, 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 tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead—charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy—suddenly turns up in a semiotics 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 amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. 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 unfolds like the intimate journal of our own lives.

©2011 Jeffrey Eugenides (P)2011 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“The sound of silk drawn across fine-grain sandpaper best describes David Pittu's voice in THE MARRIAGE PLOT, by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides...The talented Pittu rises to the occasion of this challenging work, rewarding the listener with a sense of satisfaction reserved for great works of literature.”—AudioFile magazine, An Earphones Award Winner

“David Pittu brilliantly narrates this audio version of Eugenides' complex novel, whether he's rattling off quotes from Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes or creating unique voices for the book's many characters. Among the standouts are his renditions of the slow and reflective Mitchell and Thurston, the star of the semiotics seminar who speaks in a falsely laconic and disinterested fashion to impress his classmates and professor… [Pittu] never runs out of voices for this large, global cast. The result is one of the best audiobooks of the year.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“No one's more adept at channeling teenage angst than Jeffrey Eugenides. Not even J. D. Salinger . . . It's in mapping Mitchell's search for some sort of belief that might fill the spiritual hole in his heart and Madeleine's search for a way to turn her passion for literature into a vocation that this novel is at its most affecting, reminding us with uncommon understanding what it is to be young and idealistic, in pursuit of true love and in love with books and ideas.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“This is a story about being young and bright and lost, a story Americans have been telling since Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Our exceptionally well-read but largely untested graduates still wonder: How should I live my life? What can I really believe in? Whom should I love? Literature has provided a wide range of answers to those questions—Lose Lady Brett! Give up on Daisy! Go with Team Edward!—but in the end, novels aren't really very good guidebooks. Instead, they're a chance to exercise our moral imagination, and this one provides an exceptionally witty and poignant workout.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Lives up to expectations.

I was so enthralled with Middlesex which in my mind is a perfect book/audiobook. I don’t love this one as much as Middlesex, but it comes very close. I look forward to another book from this author.

So-so follow up for Jeffrey Eugenides

Would you try another book from Jeffrey Eugenides and/or David Pittu?

I enjoyed Middlesex so much that I dove into the Marriage Plot without reading any reviews (which is fine with me). I was disappointed with the plot of the Marriage Plot. A very different kind of story than Middlesex or Virgin Suicides. David Pittu narrated the story well, but the story didn't do it for me.

The Narrator, thumbs down

If you could sum up The Marriage Plot in three words, what would they be?

lesson in Literature

What didn’t you like about David Pittu’s performance?

I really did not enjoy the voices that Mr. Pittu used to convey the female Characters. They were too affected. It became very distracting as the book went along. It almost defined the character...but in a negative way. Not at all as I would have imagined if I had been reading the book.

Eugenides = Literary Heavyweight

What does David Pittu bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His wide range of voices to give life to the different characters. He infused the characters with unique personalities that went beyond the descriptions that Eugenides provided. His reading amplifies what Eugenides tries to convey on the page.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes!

Any additional comments?

I think that I enjoyed this novel by Eugenides more than Middlesex. Given that I am recently out of college, the material felt relevant to me and I was able to fully relate to some of the struggles of the characters. As a woman, I was very intrigued by the idea of the marriage plot and how it played out in Madeleine's own life. I could certainly relate to Madeleine's worries about her future as a good marriage is no longer the pinnacle of success for a young woman. I have always love the author's prose and use of words or turn of phrase. He is able to describe an emotional state so well that you could almost feel it yourself along with the character. His character development in this novel was also very well done and he moves you through time and space without leaving you dizzy. This is my idea of the perfect beach read!

Realistic

I like how the characters examine themselves and make mistakes. He has really captured the confusion of one’s early 20’s and the struggle to help others vs. oneself.

Esoteric, Vapid, Trite

Were my expectations too high after "The Virgin Suicides" and "Middlesex"? Perhaps it's unfair to place such expectations on a brilliant writer.

I didn't connect with the characters and found them to be whiny, self-absorbed and devoid of personality. The narrator was positively horrible when voicing female characters. Please listen to the sample if you do purchase this book.

The pretentious details and plot the vapid characters wade through was exhausting. Stayed with the book until the last word waiting for an epiphany or a satisfying conclusion, alas to no end. Numerous references to Victorian Brit list were ostentacious and my degrees are in this subject matter.

Enter at your own risk.

Sadly Disappointed

I absolutely adored both the Virgin Suicide and Middlesex, and was excited to see that Eugenides had published anew. However, The Marriage Plot is bad in so many ways that I'm shocked. It is simultaneously pretentious and vapid (name-dropping and surface-level discussions of literary theory and spiritual philosophies), and the story is terribly juvenile. It is a story of pedestrian heartbreak, like most failed college relationships, and the characters are so totally plausible that they are boring, generic. I do not care about these people, or their feelings for one another, or their fates. I am also extremely put off by the exclusivity of the hardly-fictionalized, entirely-privileged world of Brown University. This feels like a poorly-executed, love-lorn, man-child's autobiography of Young Love's Dull Persistence.

The narrator did the best he could with the material at hand, but no matter how great an actor/reader you are, it's nearly impossible to make some of this writing come off as natural, or talented. For instance, Eugenides actually uses "shot his load" and "curd of evidence," in all seriousness, in the same sentence, to describe a college boy's frustrated masturbatory experiences. A lot of this novel is just plain graceless.

Waste of time

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I'm not at all sure who would enjoy this book. Boring and pedantic must appeal to someone.

Has The Marriage Plot turned you off from other books in this genre?

No, I am an optimist.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator was perfect for this book. Flat and dull.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Marriage Plot?

Too many

no what I expected

got very long I did not feel any thing for the characters. just wanted it to end

Disappointing

Even though I didn't expect this book to reach the brilliance of Middlesex, I was disappointed. The quality of Eugenides' understanding and portrayal of his characters cannot be faulted; but for much of the book those characters feel trivial. The wider implications--so evident in Middlesex--are missing. Eugenides hasn't given me new insights into these people, though his portrayal of them is note-perfect.

My strongest objection is to the reader, who renders female voices with a nasal quality that makes them all sound like whining twits for whom it's impossible to care or empathize. And this in a novel where female voices are very important. Madeline's parents may be self-centered, self-satisfied, and oblivious; but Eugenides also makes the point that they are sincere in their beliefs and love for their children. David Pittu makes them sound like movie cliches of the shallow and insulated well-to-do.