This weekend I finished reading The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, one of the books I got for my birthday in July. I chose it having enjoyed Middlesex by the same author, because I liked the title and premise, and  having seen the wife of one of Drew’s colleagues reading it when we were all in Hawaii earlier this year.
It is incredibly readable and exactly my kind of book, in terms of its setting, subject and characters. I may have found it particularly poignant having returned to Cambridge two weekends ago for the first time in over ten years to revisit my University days.
It fills you with the bittersweet anticipation of four young people figuring how who they are and what they want to do with their lives, and takes you there so vividly that you can almost see an empty road stretching out before them. It is filled with unrequited longing and a triangle that moves over time between Mitchell wanting Madeline who wants Leonard who starts to want Madeline just as she starts to want Mitchell.Â
Leonard is written completely unsympathetically until suddenly you are immersed into his world of manic depression and get an extremely well written account of being trapped by his condition (I feel I’m not making this sound like a very jolly book but it’s beautiful and not at all depressing to read). It also shows how blissfully unaware a character can be that they have grown up privileged, in contrast to how acutely aware another is of having grown up in an unhappy family that they have striven to escape from.
The salty autumn of Cape Cod was so vivid it only increased my long-held ambition to go there. I wanted to instantly and comfortably slot back into this world and picked this book back up whenever possible. I was so physically embroiled in reading it yesterday that when I had to force myself to look up, realise I was at Clapham Junction and needing to change trains, I actually found it dazing to have to deal with people and have conversations, having had to almost physically tear myself away.
This is definitely one of the best books I have ever read. That is, it’s one of a very small number of books that have got completely under my skin. I feel slightly haunted by its writing and ability to transport me into its world.
