Girls, I Think I have Read The Book Of The Year!!!!!!!!

This was not the post I intended, darlings, so I will be brief, for me, and say, that Jeffrey Eugenides' latest novel, "The Marriage Plot," is the best post-academic novel since Mary McCarthy's "The Group"!!! Yes, loves!!!!!

A literary "Valley Of The Dolls," if you will, whose key players may be based on Eugenides himself, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Mary Karr, the pleasure of this this book are enormous for literature connoisseurs. I had to fold my arms and smile smugly as Madeline Hanna references all the 19th Century writers I have read ad nausem; especially Jane Austen (Regency, really!), George Eliot, and those Bronte sisters. I wanted to tackle some of the spiritual/philosophic texts mentioned; this novel stimulates one to read while you are reading.

Leonard Bankhead, the Wallace figure, dominates the novel, and upstages everyone, just as I am sure Wallace did in life, with his brand of intellectual brilliance, and Entitled Male Heterosexual Arrogance that conceals other, more serious ills, and keeps him from being hateful. I was not satisfied with how Eugenides leaves Leonard (who, if there is a movie, will the be Role Of A Lifetime for the actor cast) at the end, but by the time you get to the brilliant last page and sentence, you understand what he has been doing all along. "The Marriage Plot" is a literary novel you read for the pleasure of literature and then want to read again to see how brilliantly Eugenides does it.

A big year this has been for Literary Referencing, what with Chad Harbach's "The Art Of Fielding" referencing both Melville and "Moby-Dick;" not to mention Nathaniel Philbrick's recently published, "Why Read "Moby-Dick"? Which, loves, I am about to take on a re-reading of, a great experience, considered by some to be the Greatest American Novel In Literature!!!!!!!

But getting back to "The Marriage Plot;" it is not only Eugenides' best work. but the most satisfying work of fiction I have read this year!!!! Grab a copy while you can!!!!!

Because, when you are done, I am giving a quiz on the Victorians!!!!!!!