Ah, Providence - setting for Eugenides's The Marriage Plot

Jeffrey Eugenides's "The Marriage Plot" lives very well within the boundaries he created for this novel: unlike his previous two novels, TMP isn't particularly concerned with establishing a sense of place. The setting is particular - Brown University/Providence circa 1980 - but Eugenides doesn't capture or evoke Providence in particular and he doesn't seem to want to (I know he could have, based on how well he gave me a feeling for Detroit, where I've never been, in his other words). In TMP, the setting could have been anywhere - he could have made up a school and city, as with The Art of Fielding or Prep, two recent successful school-based novels, and everything would have been just as good - he uses lots of Providence and Brown names and locations that will be familiar to Brown grads and to Rhode Islanders, but they're just proper nouns - if you haven't been on these streets or in these theaters or restaurants, they won't come alive to you in any way (he's good at describing professors and their offices - but here he uses no real names except for the name of the Brown prez at the time - his contemporaries must enjoy figuring out who inspired each academic character or type) - an exception to his use of accurate place names is the hospital where Leonard arrives after his breakdown: there is no Providence Hospital; he would have gone to Butler, but Eugenides wanted a scruffier urban building, and he may have modeled the hospital on St. Joseph's in South Providence. In any case, this novel is about plot and event, as the title suggests - and we follow essentially three characters, two guys, Leonard and Mitchell, in love with the same girl, Madeleine - the entire first section takes place on graduation day with much flashback and back story. Their intricate dance of romance is very typical of the age and the era, there's no really big drama or crisis - just lots of hookups and longings and impetuous break-ups and general angst about what to do after college and about parental pressure. But Eugenides keeps the story moving along rapidly and gracefully, and it's very compelling to read - not the deepest or most original novel of all time, but enticing like candy or good gossip. Have finished part 1 - which ends with graduation ceremony that Madeleine (unlikely) does not attend; onward toward the first summer post-college.