Terri-Jane's Reviews > The Marriage Plot

I really enjoyed this. I liked that there were different viewpoints of the same event, and I would have liked a bit more narration from Leonard's point of view.

I liked both Leonard and Mitchell, but (view spoiler)[I'm glad that neither of them ended up with Madeleine (hide spoiler)]. Though Madeleine gave the main perspective through the novel, I cared least about her. She's quite a passive character, and doesn't really seem to do anything that's her own idea, though this ties in with what would have been expected of her character in a real 'marriage plot' novel. At bookclub, Kate mentioned the parallels with Jane Eyre, and other marriage plot novels, some of which I hadn't noticed at all, including social elements such as (view spoiler)[Madeleine's annulment rather than divorce, so that 'it's like the marriage never happened...you won't be a divorcee.' (hide spoiler)]. Overall, I thought the novel was really clever, because whilst at heart it is a coming-of-age novel (Kate: BILDUNGSROMAN!), it has got extra layers of information in Madeleine's literary theory, Michell's religious mysicism and Leonard's biological sciences.