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

Not what I expected, but a great listen

After reading several of his other books, I should not be surprised at the character depth and development, but the three main characters were surprisingly multi- dimensional and seemed to grow with the book. While a bit short on action, the strength of the characters as well as the intense depiction of bipolar illness on the afflicted as well as family and friends was unequaled in recent fiction. A very good book for those who like to get to know multiple characters well.

Ugh I just loved it

Wow I really didn't expect to fall as in love with this book as I did. Eugenides truly is a brilliant novelist who demonstrates the power of research, emotional insight, style, and empathy to the highest power. If you relate to A Lover's Discourse, you will relate to this book. Lol.

Meh

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

Might try Middlesex but the story for

What could Jeffrey Eugenides have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

More depth in the characters - make me care about them more. They were just not that sympathetic. They were all kind of whiny, self centered and boring.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No, absolutely not.

Split personality: Which one is love?

A period piece in the 1980's that could have occurred in any decade of the 20th century about love and loving, responsibilities to the loved one vs. to oneself...especially when the "charm" of attraction turns into the reality of living with and loving the bipolar person---Three members of a college triangle tell parts of the same story from their point of view. Insight into the desperation and denial involved with anyone suffering from mental illness--and those who love them. A page turner.

Young love

What can I say? I love Jeffrey Eugenides. He is my favorite writer. He just knows how to write good stories. This is a love story, with a contemporary ending. In exploring what was originally conceived as the "marriage plot" in Jane Austen type books, Eugenides shows us the contemporary version. This is a version which explores angst, sexual discovery, gender politics and mental instability in our modern world. The book takes place in the early 80's but there aren't a whole lot of cultural references to the 80's so it is easy to forgot that you are in 1982. This is a story of young love, passionate love, unrequited love and unfulfilled visions of you and yours. Madeline is in love with Leonard. Leonard is manic. Leonard likes Madeline, not sure if he loves her. Mitchell is head over heels over Madeline, and believes one day he will marry her. In other words lots of drama and heartache, the kind that comes when you are young, figuring out the world and yourself and think you know more than your parents. I enjoyed every minute of this book, even all the English literature references (sometimes the references went on and on) but I learned a lot along the way.

Loathed the narrator, liked the book

I am stunned to see how many commenters liked this narrator. I very nearly stopped listening because I hated his female character voices so much. They all sound like the different ages of Paul Lynde. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy Paul Lynde as much as the next girl, and maybe there are even some women out there who actually sound like that. But when our heroine (a highly-educated student of Victorian literature) and her extremely well-bred and proper mother, and her college roommates, and every other woman she knows sounds like some variant on Paul Lynde, there's a problem.

I don't love this narrator's male voices either, to be honest -- way too many of them sounded like sort of dim surfer dudes to me. But his women were truly deplorable.

As for the book, I will start by saying that I, too, really enjoyed Middlesex (a male narrator, BTW, who did WONDERFUL voices for all characters, male and female). This book was not as consistently rewarding (to me) as Middlesex was. I think Eugenides' editor should have urged him to tighten up some of the sections dedicated to literary theory and the protagonists' college seminars. These sections felt self-indulgent to me, as though the author was trying to establish his smartypants cred. I think whatever plot or character development they fueled could still have been achieved in far fewer words.

Despite this, I eventually came to be interested in all three of the protagonists, and by the end of the book I was invested in their thoughts, lives and choices. So ultimately, I'm glad I stuck with it.

Great character development

It was so well written and held my atttention for all the hours. The characters are interesting. It will make you analyze how literature has affected our view of marriage and romance.

GREAT STORYTELLING

I haven't even finished this book, but I stayed up most of last night listening I was so engaged. I only forced myself to turn it off to insure I could function today. Cannot wait until later so I can continue listening.

Not fond of the narrator

Loved Middlesex. This story is a little darker. Has great characters, but the narrator made the men seem creepy and the women seem prissy.

Ignore the bad reviews -- just read it

If you hate Franzen, maybe you won't like The Marriage Plot. Your loss (on both counts). It's the same kind of book, with flawed characters that eventually become really interesting if you stick with them. Eugenides' metaphorical powers are even greater in The Marriage Plot than in his previous works. And stronger than anything I've seen in Franzen. Despite what some reviewers said, Eugenides' characters are neither boring nor trivial. In fact the description of Leonard's struggle with Lithium was breathtaking, for me the most memorable aspect of the book. Nobody writes like this guy.