Al's Reviews > The Marriage Plot

I'm afraid that I don't know enough about the old marriage plot novels (Austen, Elliot, James, etc.) that this one references to really "get" everything Eugenides is trying to do here. For example, I initially found Madeline to be fairly thinly rendered in comparison to the more fully fleshed out intellectual and emotional lives of her male counterparts, but by the end I thought that might be part of the point (ie. that she exists on the page only as an ideal mirrors the way she exists to her suitors). There were other things I found a little disappointing that may also be explained away, such as how the semiotic/deconstructionist thread of the first act is dropped for the remainder of the book, though the entire work itself clearly intends to fit that category. Maybe that doesn't sound like a 5 star review, but I did find it extremely well crafted and written, and the problems I have with it are more those that raise questions than just this-or-that was done poorly.