“There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.”
This book holds a special place in my heart that I recognize won’t have quite the same effect with many who will read this post. Jeffrey Eugenides’ latest novel focuses on a girl in her early twenties in the midst of finishing her undergraduate degree in English and writing her senior thesis on feminist literary theory and female authors. I read this book a few months ago while putting off my own senior thesis on feminist literary theory, the only thing standing between me and my BA in English. To say I could relate to the protagonist would be a grave understatement.
When I read a book and decide I love it (often deeming it my favorite book as I have a tendency to use hyperbolic speech à la Liz Lemon), I base my opinion of the book on a few different categories. Typically, the more tragic the ending the more I love the book. This is not because I am a deeply unhappy person but because I believe that tragedies and disappointments in life reveal the most about a person’s character and are the best teachers. However, as I said, I am not an unhappy person. Life is often difficult but accompanied by ever-present symbols of hope. Hopeful, tragic endings are the best kind of endings. Also, and this is an obvious one, I love an author who can make their plot and their characters, in whatever genre of fiction I’m reading, believable. I am not equating believable with realistic; a character who behaves in accordance with the world the author has created is a character I want to read about. Another category I simply can’t ignore is that I want to read beautiful sentences. I’m not saying that a book comprised of sentences you don’t ever think about highlighting or underlining can’t be a well-written or concise piece of literature; rather, I’m saying that a book like that will never be my favorite book. Sentences are important. Eugenides is a champion of all of these categories, both in The Marriage Plot and in his two previous novels. While I don’t consider this a vital category in determining my level of affection for a novel, I love a book that is filled with nods and references to classic and modern literature. Reading Eugenides is everything a literature nerd could ever want.
In this novel, Eugenides accurately captures life after college, at least in my opinion. The rotating first-person narration gives insight into male and female characters navigating life post graduation, and Eugenides proves himself in his ability to accurately portray this unique and transitional phase in the lives of young adults. Upon graduating from college, after having most of your life carefully mapped out and straightforward and then entering four years of feigned independence while still in a controlled environment and strict routine, the young adult is thrust into, essentially, the rest of their lives, realizing that all the books they read and professors they listened to didn’t necessarily equip them with a comprehensive set of lifeskills. Post-collegiate human life is chaotic while conjunctively hopeful. There is a sense of having no control while simultaneously feeling like every possibility is before you and within your reach. It is then the job of the college graduate, 20-something to make a choice. They can continue in chaos which will lead to the embracing of the numerous possibilities ahead of them or they can cling to the first picture of stability they see. For many, including Eugenides’ protagonist, that stability isn’t all that stable, the predictability isn’t all that beneficial. Eugenides captures the dichotomy of early adulthood as he emphasizes the importance of embracing the chaos, no matter how conflicting that may seem to your previous twenty-two years of life.
I love this book. I read through it in a matter of days (when I should have been writing my thesis) and found my nearest book store so as to pick up his previous two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex (to be reviewed in the near future). I was astounded by the honesty he assigned to this stage in life while offering conclusions so necessary for readers of all ages to hear. His other novels offer compelling thoughts on vastly different subjects while maintaining the unique quality and lessons to be learned in adolescence and early-adult life. I’ll say it again, he writes beautifully, and it is well worth your time to pick up something of his.
“In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.”
-Kansas
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