Starred review from August 1, 2011
Eugenides's first novel since 2002's Pulitzer Prizeâwinning Middlesex so impressively, ambitiously breaks the mold of its predecessor that it calls for the founding of a new prize to recognize its success both as a novelâand as a Jeffrey Eugenides novel. Importantly but unobtrusively set in the early 1980s, this is the tale of Madeleine Hanna, recent Brown University English grad, and her admirer Mitchell Grammaticus, who opts out of Divinity School to walk the earth as an ersatz pilgrim. Madeleine is equally caught up, both with the postmodern vogue (Derrida, Barthes)âconflicting with her love of James, Austen, and Salingerâand with the brilliant Leonard Bankhead, whom she met in semiotics class and whose fits of manic depression jeopardize his suitability as a marriage prospect. Meanwhile, Mitchell winds up in Calcutta working with Mother Theresa's volunteers, still dreaming of Madeleine. In capturing the heady spirit of youthful intellect on the verge, Eugenides revives the coming-of-age novel for a new generation The book's fidelity to its young heroes and to a superb supporting cast of enigmatic professors, feminist theorists, neo-Victorians, and concerned mothers, and all of their evolving investment in ideas and ideals is such that the central argument of the book is also its solution: the old stories may be best after all, but there are always new ways to complicate them.
Starred review from November 28, 2011
In Eugenides’s perceptive new novel set in the early 1980s, the three sides of a love triangle—Brown University undergraduates Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell—come of age in a complicated and heady environment of semiotics, religious mysticism, sexual freedom, and economic recession. After graduation, the three are forced to confront their relationships, secrets, and desires as they attempt to find their way in the real world. David Pittu brilliantly narrates this audio version of Eugenides’s complex novel, whether he’s rattling off quotes from Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes or creating unique voices for the book’s many characters. Among the standouts are his renditions of the slow and reflective Mitchell and Thurston, the star of the semiotics seminar who speaks in a falsely laconic and disinterested fashion to impress his classmates and professor. And while Pittu’s rendition of Madeline is too soft and flat, he never runs out of voices for this large, global cast. The result is one of the best audiobooks of the year. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover.