Leonard Bankhead, brilliant scientist and charismatic loner, attracts Madeleine with an intensity that she seems powerless to resist. Meanwhile, her old friend Mithcell Grammaticus, a theology student searching from some kind of truth in life, is certain of at least one thing - that he and Madeleine are destined to be together.
But as all three leave college, they will have to figure out how they want their own marriage plot to end.
I'm going to be quite blunt here. I didn't really rate this book. I was really excited to read it (perhaps that was the problem) having been promised 'One Day with George Eliot thrown in' by the Times and all written by a Pulitzer-winning author whose previous novels have been raved about no-end. I guess I was hoping to read an intricate narrative that directly compared relationships in 'great' novels to the ones of everyday life. I didn't get that at all - it was more Eat Pray Love meets One Day for me, not George Eliot. Perhaps that is my own fault for misunderstanding the premise but once I got past recognising the key literary terms I'd picked up at university and the geeky exclamations of 'omg I've read that too' and 'I didn't understand Derrida at first either!' it all just went a bit down hill.
I just didn't relate to any of the characters, which I found surprising as on the surface it seems we had a lot in common - namely our university degree and interests, but also our complete ineptitude at making decisions (it took me three days to decide I would read this book rather than Sister by Rosamund Lupton...). As it was, I found Madeleine a little annoying, which is never a good start. Em in One Day is definitely annoying, but some how I managed to understand those annoyances better and have affection for her despite those. Perhaps because I recognised friends in her? She was someone I might know. Don't get me wrong, I was never the person raving about One Day as the best book ever written but it really was much more enjoyable. Ultimately I now wonder if perhaps my opinion on these two books is rooted in the fact that I am British, not American. Maybe if I had grown up in Boston I'd have understood those characters better.
By the end I have to say I did get more into it. I really liked the ending and finally I felt some kind of emotion for the characters. There are other aspects of the book too that shouldn't be drowned by my subjective rants. For instance, I think Eugenides' exploration of depression is an interesting one and I think the relationship between someone who is suffering from such an illness and someone who loves that person but can never begin to understand it is a great subject and one that perhaps should be written about more often. I also think that the book is well written. It doesn't surprise me that he's a Pulitzer-winning author in that respect and I can see that he creates convincing characters - I just didn't particular like them...
In the end I think that Jeffrey Eugenides sat down one day and thought, 'One Day, that's a book that did well - let me do an American version with books and stuff' and so he did but it just didn't quite work for me.
Final question - what the flying duck are those yellow and orange circles on the front cover? I'm assuming wedding rings? Any confirmation or alternative opinions would be gladly received. Otherwise I will just assume the design intern got bored one day and started doodling and some how had to persuade her superior that it was a fantastic symbolic image of marriage and decision-making.
Overall it gets a 5/10. It didn't grip me enough, is what I would say in summary - it took me two and a half weeks to finish what is quite a short book. Not a good sign. The fact that I spent most of my train journey's playing Fruit Ninja on my phone may be another reason... oops.
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