Books I have read and loved

I had high expectations for this book; the characters in Middlesex have been lingering in my mind for years, and I almost forced myself to wait before starting The Marriage Plot, to delay the pleasure. If I didn't know The Marriage Plot was by Jeffrey Eugenides, though, I wouldn't have even persevered beyond 50 or so pages. This book seems to be of a completely different calibre. Much less real and engrossing, and thus much less impressive.

This may be a too-harsh comparison, but what I read of The Marriage Plot was more Mallory Towers than Middlesex. I got about halfway through before every single character became too excruciating to bear, and then accidentally found a blog post by an Indian girl critiquing the way that India was portrayed in the book. Once I realised that oh jesus, the rest of the book really IS going to be set in India, and these grating twerps are going to be moaning for another few hundred pages, while I grit my teeth and force myself to keep reading, I gave up. Continuing to read the book was worse than the OCD tendencies I have about leaving things unfinished, and I tossed it under my bedside table where I'm pretty sure it now now lying, under my foster dog's bed. Either that or he's eaten it, which is fine by me.