The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

As someone who majored in English and has taken courses in analytical theory and has deconstructed a text well beyond (I'm sure) the author's original intent and purpose, I was interested in this novel in a bookish, nerdy sort of way. Deconstructing any piece of literature is ambitious in its own right. But when an author manipulates a plot based on analytical theory and bounces back to literature in support of and in reference to that theory, it really sends your head spinning. Whoa. . .

This one definitely will not be for everyone. I'm still debating whether or not it was even for me. I love books; I love to read; and on occasion ~ not often but on occasion ~ I will revert back to my analytical theory training and think more deeply about a text.  My thinking on this text, however, did not involve theory ~ probably because it was so bluntly thrust into my face. Rather, my thinking involved the whole irony of the title and the actual content of the book.

The irony of The Marriage Plot is that it really didn't have a plot. The entire novel is built around character development with not much else happening. And once again, irony slaps me in the face with its characters. For a novel that spends so much time developing these characters, they are really not easy to relate to. I don't necessarily have to love a character to love the plot. Let's face it. There are some characters that we just love to hate. But I couldn't connect with a single one of these characters on any level. I can appreciate what Eugenides was trying to do here with analytical theory and weaving a "modern-day" romance around it; and I enjoyed reading the references to classic pieces of literature that I have read. But the novel left me searching for the plot. Maybe I should start thinking about all of those analytical theories that I studied in college. Perhaps that would allow me to connect more deeply with these characters and see the "plot" more clearly. And I guess the irony in reading this book and writing this blog post is that I am thinking more deeply about the novel and my approach to reading . . .