Marriage Plot

Addressing the ubiquitous love triangle, The Marriage Plot is a perfectly executed character study of three college students — Leonard, Madeleine, and Mitchell — who, variously, are a couple, are not a couple, were a couple, were never a couple, or were almost a couple. Ah, young love! However, absolutely nothing Eugenides writes is frivolous or insubstantial. The painful sucker punch delivered in both Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides is absent from The Marriage Plot, but the book doesn't miss it. The Marriage Plot is long on emotion and so accurately reflects private expressions of angst, love, regret, and need that it feels like reading someone's diary (or maybe your own). Taking on subjects as enormous as mental illness, classism, meaningful work, religious faith, higher education, charity, self-knowledge, and the nature of relationships, The Marriage Plot asks, Is it sometimes better to not get what you want? Eugenides is a masterful writer who doesn't shy away from uncomfortable emotions, and in his hands everyday issues reveal a deep and complex truth. Once again, the very long wait between his books has definitely been worth it. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

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

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?

It's the early 1980s. In American colleges, 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 studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes — the charismatic and intense Leonard Bankhead, and her old friend — the mystically inclined Mitchell Grammaticus. As all three of them face life in the real world they will have to reevaluate everything they have learned. Jeffrey Eugenides creates a new kind of contemporary love story in "his most powerful novel yet" (Newsweek).

"Remind[s] 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

"Eugenides's ability to reinvent the timeless tale of love and soul-searching is swoon-worthy." Vanity Fair

"I gorged myself on The Marriage Plot." Geoff Dyer

"A masterful storyteller." The Seattle Times

"Audacious and moving." Time

"Extremely ambitious...surprising, and propulsive." Chicago Sun-Times

"Deeply humane and elegantly constructed." NPR

"The finale of The Marriage Plot is unexpected, beautiful, and — Dare we hope? — timeless." The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A master of voice." The Washington Post

"Great serious romantic fun." Chicago Tribune

"Wry, engaging, and beautifully constructed." The New York Times Book Review

"A grand romance in the Austen tradition." USA Today

"A remarkable achievement." The Independent (London)

"You'll never want The Marriage Plot to end." Elle

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by FSG to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Medicis.