Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like The Marriage Plot
The best books like The Marriage Plot are The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex, and The Bell Jar. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides is about love and literary theory, mental illness, coming of age. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- The Virgin Suicides
01
Jeffrey Eugenides · Literary fiction
Five sisters.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Middlesex
02
Jeffrey Eugenides · Literary fiction
Cal Stephanides is a middle-aged man living in Berlin who decides to tell the whole story — not just his own life, but the lives of his Greek immigrant grandparents and parents, all the way back to the incest that introduced a recessive gene into his bloodline and the gene that made Cal intersex.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Bell Jar
03
Sylvia Plath · Memoir
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
04
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Educated: A Memoir
05
Tara Westover · Memoir
Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Norwegian Wood
06
Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction
Norwegian Wood is Murakami's most straightforwardly realist novel and his most personal — a coming-of-age story set in late 1960s Tokyo, narrated by Toru Watanabe, who is recalling the year he was nineteen and the two women who shaped him.
Shares mental illness and coming of age with The Marriage Plot.
Read the summary → - Kafka on the Shore
07
Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction
Kafka on the Shore runs two parallel narratives that eventually, obliquely, converge.
Both dig into coming of age.
Read the summary → - The Lincoln Highway
08
Amor Towles · Literary fiction
The Lincoln Highway unfolds over ten days in June 1954.
Both dig into coming of age.
Read the summary → - A Beautiful Mind
09
Sylvia Nasar · Biography
Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash — Nobel laureate, game theory pioneer, and paranoid schizophrenic — is one of the finest accounts of genius and mental illness in biographical literature.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - A Wizard of Earthsea
10
Ursula K. Le Guin · Fantasy
A Wizard of Earthsea is Ursula K.
Both dig into coming of age.
Read the summary → - Anatomy of an Epidemic
11
Robert Whitaker · Health
Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.
Both dig into mental illness.
Read the summary → - Angela's Ashes
12
Frank McCourt · Memoir
Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's memoir of a catastrophically impoverished Irish Catholic childhood, first in Brooklyn and then in Limerick, during the 1930s and 1940s.
Both dig into coming of age.
Read the summary →
Books like The Marriage Plot: quick answers
What are the best books like The Marriage Plot?
The best books like The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides are The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The Marriage Plot, such as love and literary theory, mental illness, coming of age.
What should I read after The Marriage Plot?
A natural next read after The Marriage Plot is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.
What books are similar to The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides?
The Marriage Plot centers on love and literary theory, mental illness, coming of age. Books with a similar feel include The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
