For me, this one didn't live up to the hype. It just wasn't that interesting.

I enjoyed this outing by Eugenides. I find his writing and the characters he creates to be compelling.

I had high hopes for this book. Really tried to push through it, but just couldn't. I found it boring and let it go about 100 pages in.

I agree with some other people--very pretentious & lulled me to sleep.

I agree that this reminded me of Jonathan Franzen, who I also enjoy reading. I loved the book and read it in a few days, and I appreciated the way madeline's story mirrored the overall marriage plot.

Quite a bit like Jonathan Franzen, but lighter. There are a lot of literary references in the beginning but considering the context - English literature undergraduates at Brown university - this makes sense. And yes they do sound pretentious (have you had a conversation recently with a smart undergraduate!?) but it fits with the character development.

I agree with a lot of the readers, really tried to read it, but just couldn't.

Madeline is writing her thesis about the marriage plot from Austen to James, at the same time falling romantically in love with perhaps not the right man for her. Eugenides's writing inside the head of a manic-depressive was incredibly done. I can see how the numerous literary references may turn some people off.

This one took me awhile to get this book read as I found it to a bit of a struggle to get through and found myself going through each section breaking down how far I was into a section on a regular basis. There were times that I tore through a section and would soon found myself slowing down in the next section. And therefore I found myself not wanting to read it and in fact last weekend, I didn't read any of the book and only got back into reading the final quarter of the book in the last few days, once I realized I only had a few more days with it. I guess I expected more out of the book, especially since I had really enjoyed The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex; I found this one to be a little too cumbersome and something that I felt that I was doing out of obligation rather than pure enjoyment, much like how Madeleine made her choices throughout the book. I did like the fact that there wasn't just one focus and that there were differing views of a similar time period and that it alternated between three of the four main characters in the book. It was certainly an interesting way to tell a story and it felt like it captured a moment in time in their lives and has me wondering what happened to Leonard, Mitchell, and Madeleine and what happened to their relationship.

It is a bit daunting with all of the literary criticism references (enough about Roland Barthes already!) but I liked it. It was painful to read about Leonard's mental illness, but it was a good story. Smartly-written!