Monday, May 27, 2013

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

My wonderful husband to be reminded me that I'm falling behind on my blogs again! But lets face it, no one is surprised by that. :) So let me get you caught up on me! Nothing has happened. Unless you count gaining more weight and becoming more uncomfortably pregnant. Ever the pessimist? Maybe not. Things have been really good. Working my last few weeks and I'm more than ready to take that time off to rest and recoup before pushing a new being into the world. It's an ongoing debate with myself about whether or not I'll go insane as a stay at home mommy? I've never had a real opportunity to do something like this. With my first child I ended up going back to work a couple months after he was born and then had multiple jobs for a long time. It's really nice to have this opportunity. Besides, when I'm home I'll have plenty to do, right? Cloth diapers and a baby means lots of laundry.. I'll figure it out.

So lately I've bee reading books from that group I'm in on Goodreads and then adding some random filler items in between. This is one of those books that I just sort of picked up and decided to read. I love the Barnes and Noble bargain priced section. Getting hardback editions cheaper than I even could at half-price books!? Hell yeah, I'll take it. Especially when they are by trusted authors. That last Anita Shreve novel I reviewed should be sanctioned as an accident. Since I got both The Marriage Plot and A Change in Altitude at the same time. When I bought the Marriage Plot the lady at B&N told me that I wouldn't be disappointed and that the only thing she found hard to accept about the book was the end. Which of course made me fret throughout the book that something awful was going to happen to ruin the whole thing. Thankfully it didn't. Normally I'd complain about someone giving me an opinion on a book before I read it, but that isn't fair at all. What am I doing right now? Of course, I'm telling you that the book is wonderful and you should read it. So I won't hold a grudge. Mostly it bothers me because I don't read reviews or even a summary of what a book is about before I start it. I don't like walking in to something and expecting it to be one way or another. However, I can understand those who do. Why read a book if it only gets 2 out of 5 stars on Goodreads? Or if enough people tell you how awful something is, shouldn't you believe them and look for something more enticing? 

I can tell you that I probably end up agreeing with the other reviewers more often than not. Consensus usually shows what's right, but sometimes I just end up loving something everyone hated, or really hating something every one else loved. I really will have to leave things like Twilight, Fifty Shades of Whatever, and Hunger Games to everyone else though. I'm not willing to brave the positive or negative reviews to read any of that crap. No offense. Just Ew. 

Anyway. I have another blog to write after this so I should probably get to talking about the book. The Marriage Plot was a good read. Slow going in the beginning for sure, but by the end I couldn't put it down. I can see why many people wouldn't really enjoy the book. It has tons and tons of huge, ridiculous words for no reason. It's kind of like... Let me put every big word I've ever heard of and throw it in here.. Hell I'll even Google some for good measure! This is really how it felt. At the same time that's what defined a few of the characters. Too smart for their own good. The story parallels between two different college students and discusses their journeys into what could be considered adulthood. Set in the 1980's makes it a little difficult for me to relate to the college mentality and the things those students had to look forward to, but I can say that I could picture it for what it was. 

After finishing the book I went and read some of the reviews on Goodreads for the novel, there was an overall weird mix of reviews. I believe that most people read The Virgin Suicides and then expected this to be just another regurgitation of the same, but it's not. And that's what's great. Each book I've read by Eugenides has been unique and moving in a different way. I see people complaining about the language of the book more than anything else. The language is half the point. Have you ever spoken to a college student who thinks they know the whole of everything? There are a lot of them. It's about being realistic, and not about making you fall in love. I really enjoyed this book and I would suggest it to anyone who is okay with a somewhat taxing read. You won't regret it.

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