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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverbott, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm about to talk to Jeffrey Eugenides, and I've been waiting for his new book,

The Marriage Plot. Well, ever since his last book, Middlesex, came out, I'm very happy to see you.

It's a wonderful book.

I couldn't stop reading it, not just for the show.

Well, I think the effort was to prove that the old-fashioned marriage plot could still drive a novel from beginning to end and keep people reading.

What made it a challenge to you?

Well, the challenge lay in the fact that I wanted to use the traditional marriage plot at the same time as I knew it was impossible

for a contemporary writer to re-engage that kind of plot.

I knew that things were going to have to be different.

So the problem lay in the fact that I was going to use it and not be able to use it at

the same time.

And tell the listener what the marriage plot is.

The marriage plot is the foundational plot of the novel, certainly the English novel.

You can think of Jane Austen novels where they're about a young woman finding a husband,

...