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Dubray Review

It’s the 1980s and Madeleine is writing a thesis on the subject of marriage in Victorian novels. The courting rituals of the past bring her own relationship with Leonard – an intense, damaged young man she’s struggling hard to understand – into sharp relief. Also vying for her affections is Mitchell, who is willing to relinquish his religious studies if only Madeleine will be his wife – despite the fact they’ve never even dated.  When they leave college and enter the real world, the young students will have to re-examine everything they thought they knew.  It’s been far too long since Eugenides’ last book, Middlesex, but it has been worth the wait.  Witty and poetic, it’s a book you’ll never want to finish but, when you do, it will make you look back at every person you kissed with more fondness than they deserve. 

- Donal Harding, Bray

Description

"There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel." Anthony Trollope It's the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead -- charismatic loner and college Darwinist -- suddenly turns up in a seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus -- who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange -- resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they have learned.Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

Reviews

Praise for Middlesex: 'This year's most sumptuously enjoyable book ! superb' Sunday Times, Books of the Year 'This is a truly original and compelling novel, by turns sad, funny and moving' Daily Mail 'The best American novel since The Corrections ! exuberant, ambitious, deeply compassionate and wildly funny' GQ 'A transatlantic epic ! a towering achievement' Los Angeles Times 'A warm and beautifully written novel that illuminates the part of the human soul that even biology cannot reach' Sunday Times Praise for The Virgin Suicides: 'One of the finest novels -- I have read in many years! a wonderful mixture of amusement, wistfulness and contained grief' John Banville 'One of the finest novels in many years -- a Catcher in the Rye for our time' Observer 'Beautiful funny and touching ! Eugenides is a skilful craftsman and a hypnotic storyteller' Jay McInerney 'Entire and unstoppable! a sparkling work' The Times