Glum Alum

It's been about a decade since 'Middlesex', but we finally have a new novel from Jeffrey Eugenides.  'The Marriage Plot' is worth the wait. Unlike 'Middlesex' most of this book takes place in a single year, the year that follows the main characters' graduation (well, two out of three actually graduated) from Brown. There are also some revealing glances back at their college years and childhood. Life isn't so easy for these privileged and smart kids, though the author doesn't simply attribute their difficulties to either their intelligence or their status.  They're just human and struggling to find themselves as adults.  We've all been there.

The novel has a long list of strengths.  The writing is very good, and sometimes downright brilliant.  Descriptions often ring true to an startling extent.  Dialogue is both believable and readable.

I particularly enjoyed the way intellectual life is woven together with real life in very interesting ways. These are smart kids that take their authors and their own thoughts seriously, but not so seriously as to avoid reality.  Literary criticism, philosophy, religion, science, all are active forces in their lives, and as readers we get to witness the interaction. The life of the mind really does matter here.

One of the characters suffers from serious manic depression, and the portrayal of this disease from both that character's point of view and those around him is bracing and convincing, so much so that I'll bet the author has drawn on some first-hand experience.  He did go to Brown.  I wonder how much autobiography is included here in one way or another?

The narrative structure is not straightforward but it is easily understood and interesting.  While the author sticks with third person throughout, the same events are told from different points of view and in different narrative contexts. Well done. Interesting without being overly clever. I would have appreciated more clear division into chunks or chapters.  It does seem unnecessarily 'swimmy' at times, but alas I whine here.

This is one of those coming-of-age books where at the end the characters are finally ready to begin (along the lines of D H Lawrence's 'Sons and Lovers'), so don't expect a neat and tidy wrap up.  Nonetheless at least some issues reach a temporary resolution, and we conclude with a satisfying if vague sense of how the main characters might move forward.  (Hmmm, 'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes.  I'm reading that now.)

I don't often think of the late 70's / early 80’s as a time with a specific feel, but the author is very successful in evoking that period.  I remember it well.  That's what it felt like. Very different from the 60's and also distinct from the years that followed.

I haven't read 'The Virgin Suicides' (his first novel), but it's now on my must-read list.  'Middlesex' was no fluke.  This is a significant author worth following.  Hope it's not another decade till the next novel appears. From Eugenides I'll take what I can get whenever I can get it.