Play Book Tag discussion

This is the story of Madeline Hannah and the men that love her. The story starts when Madeline is about to go to her college graduation from Brown, but then moves back and forth to fill in the back-stories of Madeline, Mitchell and Leonard. Mitchell has had a crush on Madeline from the beginning, but Madeline meets Leonard in a semiotics class and is smitten with him. The story is set in the 1980's and delves into a broad range of academic topics like semiotics, english literature, religious studies and philosophy. Eugenides wanted to write a modern day romance that was almost the anti-thesis of the Victorian literature that Madeline loves.

I didn't love this book, partly because I thought that from the back blurb that more of the plot would revolve around the "marriage plot" that Madeline was using for her studies. This is was really just a small part of the story, and much more of the story was about the idealism typical of college students and mental illness. I didn't particularly care for any of the characters either, so it wasn't a very fast read for me. On the plus side, the book was well written (although a bit pretentious). I did like that the POV rotated among the three principal characters so the reader would often see events from two viewpoints. I also enjoyed the 1980's setting since that was when I was in high school and college. I would definitely be willing to read Middlesex, because of the quality of the writing.

I have this, but have never really been excited about reading it. I loved Middlesex, though.