The Marriage Plot

Many other reviewers captured my sentiments about this book, but I'll add a few cents anyway. I was lured in by the idea of a modern take on the marriage plot. Unlike the heroines in novels by Austen or the Brontes, however, Madeleine is an incredibly flat character. There's little presented to redeem her and I disagree with the author that she's the post-feminist representation of Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennet. Even when those characters behaved foolishly or unthinkingly, they realized the error of their ways and atoned for it or took off the blinders that hindered them. Madeleine is closest to Anna Karenina, in my opinion, because she's just a pretty shell trying to force what she can't have into the life she believes she ought to have, although she doesn't end up under a train. Perhaps, that's another reason she's so unsympathetic and dull. Leonard and Mitchell are somewhat more fleshed out, but they just can't breathe life into a book about nothing. A bigger problem with the book is the amount of time it takes to wade through needless exposition. Did I really need to wade through almost one CD for Madeleine to get up and open the door? Am I really supposed to believe that the important phone call Madeleine gets a few minutes before graduation didn't actually take an hour, as opposed to maybe 5 minutes in the book?? The entire sequence pre-graduation is quite ridiculous, in fact.

One useful fact gleaned from this book is that 7Up once contained lithium! So, there's that, and the audiobook version took up a several commuting hours.