Friday 18 May 2012

Video Interview: Jeffrey Eugenides

A new Jeffrey Eugenides book was the highlight of the publishing year in 2011 and the highlight of 2012’s Sydney Writer’s Festival is going to be an engagement with that same author.

Shearer’s Bookshop was incredibly lucky to have the author visit them in Leichhardt to sign some books, imbibe some caffeine and answer some questions from a very starstruck bookseller before his Writer’s Festival event.

The Marriage Plot cements Eugenides as a must-read author.  The narrative introduces us to Madeleine, Leonard and Mitchell, three students just about to graduate from Brown University.  We discover three young people all playing at Understanding Life  through their college experience who then embark on life’s journey still wondering at how to use the lessons they have learnt, both in and out of the classroom.

As Madeleine, Leonard and Mitchell go about the business of responding to life’s blows - manic depression, unrequited love, unrealised potential - the reader is treated to some wonderful passages and inferences about literary theory, religious parity, elitist idealism, intellectual ennui and last, but not least, the powerful nature of love in all it’s forms.

Check out what Jeffrey Eugenides had to say when he spoke to Shearer’s yesterday afternoon.


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