jeffrey eugenides the marriage plot review

But Eugenides combines a rigorous understanding of his sources (which include everything from Sophocles to Jeanette Winterson) with a wry and sprightly voice that is entirely original. 'This might have resulted in a clumsy pastiche or a confused mess.Like Cal, it's damned by its own abundance, not quite sure what it wants to be.' - Stewart O'Nan, The Atlantic Monthly (.) (I)t's off proportionally, both section-to-section and overall, its two halves at odds, each interesting at times but neither truly satisfying, despite Eugenides's prodigious talent. The narration is baldly self-conscious in its cleverness. ' Middlesex is consistently whimsical in its scene-setting and use of language, but despite its vaudeville exchanges and niftily isolated punch lines, it's rarely out-and-out funny.

No consensus, though most quite enthusiastic

Awarded Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2003ī+ : broad canvas, often very entertaining, but not entirely satisfactory as a whole.

General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author (Oct.Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs. In capturing the heady spirit of youthful intellect on the verge, Eugenides revives the coming-of-age novel for a new generation The book's fidelity to its young heroes and to a superb supporting cast of enigmatic professors, feminist theorists, neo-Victorians, and concerned mothers, and all of their evolving investment in ideas and ideals is such that the central argument of the book is also its solution: the old stories may be best after all, but there are always new ways to complicate them. Meanwhile, Mitchell winds up in Calcutta working with Mother Theresa's volunteers, still dreaming of Madeleine. Madeleine is equally caught up, both with the postmodern vogue (Derrida, Barthes)%E2%80%94conflicting with her love of James, Austen, and Salinger%E2%80%94and with the brilliant Leonard Bankhead, whom she met in semiotics class and whose fits of manic depression jeopardize his suitability as a marriage prospect. Importantly but unobtrusively set in the early 1980s, this is the tale of Madeleine Hanna, recent Brown University English grad, and her admirer Mitchell Grammaticus, who opts out of Divinity School to walk the earth as an ersatz pilgrim. Eugenides's first novel since 2002's Pulitzer Prize%E2%80%93winning Middlesex so impressively, ambitiously breaks the mold of its predecessor that it calls for the founding of a new prize to recognize its success both as a novel%E2%80%94and as a Jeffrey Eugenides novel.

Jeffrey eugenides the marriage plot review