I don’t agree with Emperor Joseph II that Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro had “too many notes,” but I do think that Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot had too many words. The extra words aren’t evenly distributed. They seem to have piled up in the middle third of the book: starting with the initial descriptions of Leonard’s manic depressive psychosis and continuing through the strangely unmoving descriptions of Mitchell’s experiences as a volunteer in Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in India. I just didn’t care.
I enjoyed the last 80 or so pages (the last 20% of the book)–the two final chapters in which 1) Leonard and Madeleine get married, honeymoon, and melt down; and 2) Madeleine and Mitchell do the right thing and don’t even think about getting married after all. Thank goodness for small favors. I couldn’t have dealt with an ending that saddled Madeleine with Mitchell. Eeeeeew.
The actual ending–the author’s summing up of the plot through Madeleine and Mitchell’s final conversation–is a bit much, although it is pleasantly self-referential. It didn’t make me smile, exactly, but the corners of my mouth did turn up a little bit.