Eugenides: I’m more Hillbilly than Mr Greek

Don’t believe the pseuds. You don’t have to be clever to read Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. The novel is his first since the Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex in 2002 and on one level it is terribly, terribly clever. The central character goes to university, where she studies the intricate marriage plots common to many nineteenth century novels before becoming embroiled in an intricate marriage plot of her own. Eugenides plays with form and reveals his characters through the books they read. Like I said, it’s clever.

I’m much too ill-read and ill-bred to appreciate Eugenides’ dazzling literary range, which, I’m told by wiser owls than me, surpasses that of T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land.

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There is, unquestionably, an element of Professor Eugenides showing off in places and you could read the novel as some sort of post-modern treatise.