The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Isn’t it odd how the universe works?  Here I am, struggling to find my place in this world and understand what’s going on with my emotions, and I pick up my latest read, The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, which addresses just such issues.  I had no real clue what to expect when I picked up this book, other than a great read, because Eugenides had never disappointed me with his books (see here and here).

The Marriage Plot is a modern-day nod to the Regency and Victorian authors who wrote about life, love and marriage.  The story revolves around three people; Madeleine, who is from an affluent family and graduating from Brown University with a degree in English, Leonard, a brilliant biology student from the wrong side of the tracks and who is Madeleine’s boyfriend, and Mitchell, a religions-major who is in love with Madeleine.  On the day of Madeleine, Leonard and Mitchell’s graduation, Madeleine learns that Leonard has been committed to a psychiatric ward for depression/a break down.  Even though they had broken up earlier in the semester, Madeleine leaves her own commencement ceremony to rush to Leonard’s side, there by setting up a pattern for their relationship.  Meanwhile, in order to escape his unrequited love for Madeleine, Mitchell is planning a back-packing trip to Europe and Indian for post-graduation.  The truth in this story is the quest that Madeleine and Mitchell are on to find themselves; both are in love with people that can’t, for different reasons, return their love.  So, when you’re young, educated, and have the world in front of you, how do you deal with that?  How do you find a place in the world that you can be comfortable in knowing that the one you love isn’t in love with you?  What plans can you make, and how can you adjust when those plans have to change?  Eugenides explores all these issues (and I’m sure more that I just couldn’t pick up in my condition), with aplomb and honesty that characterizes his work.

In The Marriage Plot, the narrative shifts mainly between Madeleine and Mitchell, and once to Leonard.  In this case, I wasn’t such a fan of the device; I found Madeleine to be a bit vapid and wasting her potential, and Mitchell the much more interesting of the two – I would have appreciated more of him and less of her.  But I guess that’s a sign of a good author with engaging characters; I have a strong feeling about spending time with the author’s creations, and that’s indicative of engagement.   

I think what really drove me nuts about the situation was that Madeleine wasn’t living up to her full potential and was selling herself short.  We all know people like this (and if you don’t, you’re the one in your social group that your friends think of as ‘that person’), and I’m at a point in my life – removed from the post-graduation glow/freak-out – where I don’t have the patience for these people.  But, again, I think that’s a sign of Eugenides’s skill, that he has me so engaged in his characters that I’m rooting for them, and want to sit down and give them life-advice.  

In a book like this, the characters are so wrapped up in the plot that they’re inseparable.  Given this, it’s hard to discuss the movement of the plot without also discussing the characters.  The plot moves quickly enough, but it gets caught up in the journeys of self-discovery that the characters are on.  If you’re not interested in seeing a young man grapple with his religious feelings, or a bipolar man’s efforts to find a comfortable spot in his own body, or a young woman’s fight for self-identity, then you won’t enjoy the plot.  But it’s those internal quests that move the story and plot forward, and Eugenides exercises his mastery of the written word to create the engine for the plot through his character’s thoughts and emotions.

So, final verdict?  Read this book.  Read all of Eugenides’ books – they’re great.  While I didn’t like this one as much as Middlesex or The Virgin Suicides, it is still a great example of Eugenides’ skills as an author, and contributes massively to his canon.  I’ll admit that I might not have been in the best head-space to read about quests for self and a character dealing with a massive depressive episode, so I’m looking forward to re-reading this book in the future, when I may be able to better appreciate it.  But, regardless, this was an interesting book that the universe put in my way at an interesting time of my life.

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides

When DVDs first came out, I was at the age when I was working part-time and still living at home, so I had disposable income kicking around (god, those were the good ol’ days….).  With some of that extra scratch, one of the first DVDs I bought myself was Sophia Coppola’s flick, The Virgin Suicides.  It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I heard about the book that it was based on, and read it thanks to a friend’s recommendation.  After reading Middlesex, I was on a quest to read more of Jeffrey Eugenides’ works, so it seemed like a good time to re-read The Virgin Suicides.  Now, it had been a few years since I had seen the movie or read the book, so it was almost like coming to the story fresh.

The plot is a hauntingly chilly look at suburbia during the rise of the American middle-class in the 1970s.  Narrated to the reader by one of the local neighborhood boys, The Virgin Suicides tells the story of the Lisbon girls; five sisters, ranging in age from 13-18.  The boys narrating the story describe their obsession with the beautiful and mysterious Lisbon girls as a long-term fixation, but it develops into an inquest for the truth when the youngest girl, Cecilia commits suicide.  What follows is the boys’ observations on how Mrs. Lisbon cracked down, how Mr. Lisbon fought for sanity in an uncomfortable home-situation, and how the entire family fell apart.

The thing about this book is that I think it could be read a half-dozen different ways by a half-dozen different people.  When I first read it, I was the same general age as the Lisbon girls were; to me, it came across as frightening in its possibilities.  In the re-reading of it, a decade later, I remember back to that era in my life, and wonder how I came out of it (relatively) unscathed.  I’ve never suffered from a serious depression, nor had repressive parents, so now, with the distance of time and the clearing of angsty-hormones from my system, I find I can’t relate as I once did, but I can still empathize.

And that’s the trick behind Eugenides’ writing.  He’s writing, in essence, about young women in the first blush of life, and he’s painted them as realistic, believable and sympathetic characters.  You might not agree with everything that Lux does, or understand Cecilia’s motivations, or can forgive Mary, but each of the girls feels like a real person, who has quirks and flaws that makes them human.  

In terms of writing style, I’m surprised this book isn’t assigned to high school English classes.  It’s rife for analysis on what the girls’ particular choice in song is, or what the planets in Mr. Lisbon’s classroom could symbolize, or the role of the family oak tree in the girls’ understanding of selves.  I don’t think the topic material is beyond the grasp of high school kids, and it can’t be any more psychologically damaging than reading a story about a couple of thirteen year-olds falling so desperately in love they kill themselves (I mean, come on, WHY is that play taught to kids?!), so I think it would be a good one to appear on the syllabi of young people; it might cast light on some sticky situations that high school kids are dealing with.

For all that, I find the ending to this book to be difficult to assimilate.  As the title implies, there are some deaths; maybe because I’ve never been ‘there’ mentally, I find myself to be a casual observer to the slow decline of the Lisbon family.  I can’t understand why the girls do what they do, I can’t agree with it (because I know it always gets better once you’re out of high school), and so I find myself passively accepting the plot structure Eugenides uses.  This is a little odd given how engaging the characters are; usually I’m so emotionally invested in good characters that it kills me if they die, but not in this case.

So, final verdict?  Read this book.  Eugenides knocks it out the park with this one, and the movie is a stunningly beautiful homage to a well-writing piece of literature.  If The Virgin Suicides teaches the reader anything (and all good literature should impart some sort of lesson), it’s that beauty can be found in even the most dismal of situations, and Eugenides’ plot and writing style reflect that moral.

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

I get ideas of what book to read next from a lot of places; sometimes, my current read will trigger my next, or I’ll see something in the book store that looks interesting, or I’ll see an interview with an author on a work that I want to read for myself.  My favourite method of selecting a book is a recommendation, which is what happened with my latest read, Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides.  But this recommendation came in a roundabout way; my coworkers were sitting in our staff kitchen talking about it, when one said to the other “I just can’t believe that the grandmother married her brother.”  My jaw hit the table, and I was so pissed that they had ruined (what I had assumed was) the big reveal of the book.  Well, I figured, now that I knew, I might was well read the book to see what kind of train-wreck led up to that event.  However, that information isn’t a secret – it’s the major conceit of the book, and Eugenides puts it on front-street.

So, what’s the story about?  The story is being told to the reader by Calliope, and is about her family history, beginning with her grandparents as they immigrate from Greece to the States in the 1920s.  On the boat over, they pretend to be strangers, marry, and when they arrive state-side, move in with their cousin (who is also married) who agrees to keep their secret.  The book follows the history of Calli’s grandparents, her own parents, and then her own life until her 30s.  The problem is that, while Calli’s childhood is what you would expect for a young girl from an enterprising immigrant family in Detroit, Michigan, Calli is different.  The close blood-lines in the village where her grandparent came from, compounded by their incest, then the marriage of her parents (who were second cousins), led to a gene mutation that haunts Calli.  The entirety of the story is one of self-reflection, self-discovery, and the self, in general.  

Eugenides won a Pulitzer Prize for Middlesex, and I completely agree with that.  His writing style is at once flowery and descriptive, without using one extra or unnecessary word.  He presents his narration almost as if Calli were sitting across from you relating the tale, or as if you’re reading the screen play for the action being described.  You can see the words jump off the page, the characters come to life, and the plot unfolding in front of you; it’s an amazingly well-done writing style, and Eugenides seems to engage in it so effortlessly.

The characters that Eugenides created are a revelation.  From Calli, the young girl who is never quite sure what is wrong with her, to Cal the run away, to Desdemona the guilt-wracked grandmother, to Lefty the unaffected grandfather, and extending to all the other characters who enter Calli’s life, either fleetingly, or who are central to the telling of her story, Eugenides uses a deft-hand to create and develop believable and sympathetic characters that the reader wants to know more of.  It’s a treat in a book to get one engaging character, but to get an entire cast of them is something that I highly prize in the books that I read, and that I really enjoyed in this book.

So, final verdict?  I would definitely say you have to read this book.  The plot concept, the characters and the writing style are all so unique and engaging, that you’ll be missing out on a major contribution to the modern literary tradition if you skip it.  I was so captured with Eugenides that I picked up his other books at the book store the other day, and I’m looking forwards to visiting his works again in the near future.