The Marriage Plot
The new novel from the bestselling author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.
Brown University, 1982. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English student and incurable romantic, is writing her thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot – authors of the great marriage plots. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different men, intervenes.
Leonard Bankhead, brilliant scientist and charismatic loner, attracts Madeleine with an intensity that she seems powerless to resist. Meanwhile, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus, a theology student searching for some kind of truth in life, is certain of at least one thing – that he and Madeleine are destined to be together.
But as all three leave college, they will have to figure out how they want their own marriage plot to end.
”'If you were ever young and thought you knew what you wanted, if you ever imagined that no one could feel such intensity of emotion as you, if you ever had your dreams dashed and your heart broken, then this is the book for you” - The Times
‘I adored The Marriage Plot … David Nicholls’ One Day with George Eliot thrown in’ Erica Wagner, The Times, Books of the Year -
”'I gorged myself on The Marriage Plot” - Geoff Dyer
”'A marvellous, compulsive storyteller; he reminds us that while love may not always triumph, it follows its own wayward course to the end” - Sunday Telegraph
”'Where it excels is in pinpointing human emotions and in capturing the giddy flux of young love. As Mitchell says, 'There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.' Funny, poignant and insightful, this is one of those books” - Sebastian Shakespeare
”'Immensely readable, funny and heartfelt, with instantly beguiling writing that springs effortlessly back and forth over the year’s events… it was indeed worth waiting for” - Daily Telegraph
”'Utterly engrossing … so well depicted - with wit, care and charm - that Eugenides hasn’t just raised his game, he’s changed the fictional goalposts” - Daily Mirror
”'In the generosity and and nuance of his characters and paragraphs you are reminded of the Jonathan Franzen of 'The Corrections'” - Observer
”'Moving, human and challenging…subtle, pertinent narrative observations that show the work of a master of fiction at work” - Times
4thestatebooks