the marriage plot

I finished reading The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. In 8th grade I was obsessed with The Virgin Suicides after reading it and seeing the movie, so I was excited to finally read another book by the same author. This book takes place in the early 80's and the main characters form your typical love triangle. Madeleine loves Leonard, Leonard sometimes loves Madeleine and Mitchell loves Madeleine. Leonard suffers from manic depression and the majority of the book is an insight into his life and the lives of the mentally ill. Each character takes a turn narrating and it's really beautiful and heartbreaking to see how they see one another. I think another reason I enjoyed this book so much was how well I felt I related to Madeleine sometimes. I dated someone in high school very similar to Leonard and felt the same desperation Madeleine did in hoping her love would be enough to change the person her boyfriend became as a result of his disease. My absolute favorite lines of the book were these:

(Madeleine is searching for Leonard after hearing he is in trouble and runs into one of his roommates or friends, I can't remember which)

Madeleine- "Who are you anyway?"

Roommate/Friend- "Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them."

Uggghhh. Right??? Because who hasn't thought they could change/save/cure/rescue someone with their love? We all just want to be heroes to someone.

The whole time while reading I kept thinking, "This would make a FABULOUS movie." The mental illness love story is very in right now anyway. I propose Ben Whishaw as Leonard, the perfect Natalie Portman as Madeleine and Anton Yelchin as Mitchell. If you ever read it, tell me who you would choose.