Book Review: The Marriage Plot (48 in 2012? #12)

     The Marriage Plot is the latest effort from Pulitzer Prize winning author Jeffrey Eugenides.  I was a huge fan of the prize winning novel Middlesex and was looking forward to this follow up written nine years later.  To say I was disappointed with The Marriage Plot isn't really fair.  I certainly didn't find it as engrossing or interesting as Middlesex, and that was a small let down, but there was plenty about the novel I found entertaining.  Eugenides deserves a spot next to Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon on the list of the best authors of this era and while this book probably won't be held up as the perfect example of that placement, it has done nothing to hurt his standing.
     Much like Middlesex, as well as Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Franzen's The Corrections, The Marriage Plot plays with time, constantly taking us back in time for long periods of text to fill in storyline in the present.  It's a technique Eugenides seems to have perfected as the book is never more interesting then when it steps back into the character's past.  It's where we are given the most from the characters, where we feel the most depth.  I found the longer the book went on and the more the reader is fully established in the present, the more I found myself not caring.  The novel as a whole seems to be a coming of age story, but I became annoyed with the characters transformed states and the decisions that got them there.
     Even with it's shortcomings, there is something about the novel that keeps you reading.  As annoying as the characters became Eugendies was still able to make the reader concerned with their outcomes.  Eugenides spends time, including the title of the novel, talking about the Victorian idea of a marriage plot, and in many ways this novel is a modern take on the concept.  The actual idea is outdated and wouldn't be accepted in this day and age, but Eugendies has tweeked it to the sensibilities of the world we now live in.  If for nothing else, the need to see how he wraps up this modern marriage plot is compelling enough to keep one reading.  The idea of carrying old ideas into a new post-modern world is also an important theme of the novel.  How the characters deal with this dilemma, what to hold on to, what to let go, what to assimilate, is a high point of the work.
     The Marriage Plot won't go down as one of my favorite novels of all time, it will probably have a hard time finding it's way on my Top 5 reads of 2012, but it isn't without it's worth or merit.  If you enjoy literature, it's probably a must read, just don't go in looking for genius and you will probably be able to enjoy it for what it is.