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Books: “The Marriage Plot” by Jeffrey Eugenides

When we first meet Madeleine Hanna she’s hungover and heartsick. It’s 1982, graduation day at Brown University, and Madeleine’s parents are at her apartment house front door, buzzing. Old Money, they’ll breakfast with Madeleine instead of taking her for a graduation dinner so they won’t have to spend two nights paying for a hotel.

Welcome to the world of Hanna. Madeleine has everything a young woman could want: she’s an English major with an Ivy League degree, wealth, athleticism, and beauty. What she doesn’t have is a near future: she’s been rejected by every graduate program she applied to and the brilliant boy she planned to live with after graduation has dumped her.

Madeleine loves Leonard. Mitchell loves Madeleine. On graduation day, Leonard is in a Providence psych ward.

This book is the journey these three take, together and alone, the year after they leave Brown. Their story is comic, sad, moving, sexy, bawdy, porny (yes, there’s a difference,) surprising and sometimes very frightening.

After graduation, Mitchell heads home to Detroit to save and earn money, driving a cab and busing tables at a Greek restaurant, all the while pining for Madeleine. Why is she with Leonard? Why isn’t Mitchell good enough? Then again, what if he attained his desire? Would he grow bored of her? A child of Greek immigrants, Mitchell tussles with his working-class parents over his professional future and a planned trip. Europe, yes. India?

Meanwhile, Leonard receives a research fellowship on Cape Cod, where he’ll study yeast. (Trust me, his field of study matters.) Madeleine tends to Leonard there, fights politely with her family, focuses her ambition (she’ll be a Victorianist!) and re-applies to graduate schools. Theirs is a sweet but rocky romance, infused with intelligence and wit.

It’s a loaded year for these three: religious experience, world travel, mental illness, scientific discovery, familial and marital duty. Don’t worry! This is a funny, smart read filled with riffs on, say, a girl’s beautiful ass, or the conundrum of deconstructing love while in love.

Like its title, the story’s narrative engine is fueled by an old-fashioned plot. Will Madeleine marry Leonard? Will Mitchell fight for her? Will Leonard survive? Missed aerograms, busy telephone lines, this is Jane Austen on fast forward.

I couldn’t put it down.

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