And Sometimes They Were Very Sad

59. The Marriage Plot

This book was a gut punch for me to read.  It wouldn’t be for other people, but for me it was painful for reasons I won’t write about here.  It made me very sad, but I also read it differently than anyone else would and so I think all of my opinions are going to be skewed.

I identified with Madeline, maybe too much.  I also have spent much of my life escaping into stories and have so many plots and characters floating around in my mind that my realities can never live up to my expectations.  I identified with all three characters as they fell in to the chasm of the “Real World.”  We hear about it during our education, everyone around us pretends that we have done everything right to be prepared for its realities.  We go to school and study in order to Be something.  We believe that we have a handle on who we want to be for the rest of our lives, but truthfully we know nothing.  We have simply been hiding, avoiding.

The book is wonderfully written, Eugenides plays with time in a wonderful way.  His writing shows how two people can share an experience but feel and remember it in excruciatingly different ways.  He highlights again how insecure people truly are with themselves and how the people around them know very little of the truth.  He brings each of the characters to life in a very vivid, though not always happy, way.  I am sure there will be many complaints about the entitled nature of the advantaged youth of the 1980’s.

I keep seeing the story labeled as a love triangle but I didn’t see it that way; it is more about choices.  We all make choices, big and small, every day.  We also constantly wonder what the other choice would have brought us, often believing that the better choice was the other option.  I am so glad that Mitchell gave Madeline a choice, for his sake as much as for hers.