FICTION: EILEEN BATTERSBYreviews The Marriage PlotBy Jeffrey Eugenides Fourth Estate, 406pp. £14.99

MADELEINE IS AN English- literature major. That she is bright and confident is as much due to her stable, politely liberal east-coast upbringing and her good looks as to her intelligence, which is based more on the fiction she has studied than on any natural common sense or staggering perceptions of her own. “To start with, look at all the books. There were her Edith Wharton novels, arranged not by title but date of publication, there was the complete Modern Library set of Henry James . . . there were the dog-eared paperbacks assigned in her college courses, a lot of Dickens, a smidgen of Trollope, along with good helpings of Austen, George Eliot and the redoubtable Brontë sisters.”

Maddy, as she is also known, is obviously far from stupid, but she is no genius and feels secure in the world of the Regency, as she classifies Austen, and of the Victorian novel. Into this comfortable setting, of stories populated by young women whose fates are determined by good marriages, storms the disconcerting intruder known as literary theory. Suddenly an English major may begin to wish she was better at math.

True to her role as a romantic heroine, Madeleine also has men problems. Mitchell, an ardent admirer, is merely good-friend material and useful at times of emotional crisis, while tall, long-haired, suitably Byronic Leonard, the one she wants, is elusive and unpredictable.

This, his third novel, is the first by Jeffrey Eugenides since Middlesex(2002) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, breaking the nine-year silence that followed his extraordinary debut, The Virgin Suicides(1993). In it, he takes a courageous risk by not taking any risk at all. The Marriage Plotis a kindly narrative about three graduate students in the US of the 1980s, all of whom met at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island.

Madeleine is relatively privileged: her father is a former college president and her mother keeps a social diary. By the modest economic standards of Mitchell and Leonard, Maddy seems well heeled. After all, her father does finance the Saab she buys as a graduation gift.

So two very different suitors revolve around a tennis-playing heroine who prides herself on dating only normal guys from normal backgrounds. Leonard is a biology major, a man of science; his rival, Mitchell, is studying religion and by default becomes a man of God. Mitchell certainly cares, but he is only human, not a saint, as he discovers in India. Eugenides is effective both on the subject of unrequited love and of love as a preoccupation when people are sufficiently young to have no other responsibilities.

Eugenides is a good storyteller and steers his carefully constructed and generously detailed tale with a light touch, linguistic restraint and neither stylistic nor satirical pretensions. The brisk comedy and cultural references gradually yield to a seriousness that is as sad as life does tend to be outside the movies.

The dialogue consistently rings true. Among the many strengths of a novel that makes no bold claims to be anything other than honest realism is the brilliant array of minor characters, most notably Madeleine’s stoic mother, Phyllida, and Alwyn, the heroine’s disgruntled older sister. There are also occasional Pynchon-like flourishes, but there are no traces of the laboured situation comedy or heavy-handedness that often overwhelms Jonathan Franzen’s forays into similar territory. Eugenides knows when to end a gag and reduce a clause.

Although The Marriage Plotis long, at 406 dense pages, it feels shorter, and is superior not only to Franzen's Freedombut to The Correctionsas well. It is immensely likable and succeeds in re-creating the way we were and are. Young people will gasp in recognition; older readers will sigh at the memories it evokes. Eugenides is not taking on the 19th-century literary canon or attempting the great American novel. Instead he contents himself with writing a big American novel. In those terms, and in its readability, it is a significant achievement.

His earlier novels confronted taboo subjects. In The Virgin Suicides, five pretty sisters collectively agree that life is not worth the bother and take action, much to the fascinated horror of a watching chorus of now middle-aged men who revisit the lustful boy witnesses they were when the multiple tragedy unfolded. Calliope, the narrator of Middlesex, gives her account of what it is like to be between sexes, to be both and neither, a hermaphrodite. In telling her story, Eugenides explores genetics.

The Marriage Plotmay seem far less controversial by comparison. So the lovely Madeleine digs in her heels to catch the sexually attractive Leonard, the classic Mr Wrong. But there is far more to it than that. "It was as if, before she'd met him, her blood had circulated greyly around her body, and now it was all oxygenated and red."

Maddy thinks she has caught him, only to lose him and then regain him by default when he is ill. The pair set off together when Leonard joins a research project studying the mating patterns of yeast cells. His behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, and what had seemed merely eccentric becomes manic as Leonard’s depression deepens. This is where Eugenides demonstrates exactly how good a writer he is.

What begins as a campus love triangle acted out by three young people with little to worry about except peer pressure, sex and postgraduate studies develops into a study of how extended childhood eventually ends.

Madeleine’s life, once as neatly ordered as her bedroom, with its themed wallpaper, becomes increasingly complicated as her romantic trophy is exposed as a burden.

There are several moments in this novel when a lesser writer would have opted for the obvious. Eugenides doesn't. Madeleine remains likable, as does Mitchell through his dawning self-awareness. No, Leonard is neither Heathcliff nor Mr Darcy, but he is real, and we listen when he says, "Let me tell you what happens when a person's clinically depressed . . . the brain sends out a signal that it's dying . . . the body receives it, and after a while, the body thinks it's dying too. And then it begins to shut down. That's why depression hurts, Madeleine."

Far closer to Updike than to Franzen or John Irving, The Marriage Plotmay not win a Pulitzer, but it surpasses Middlesex. It is funny, humane, accomplished, serious and readable.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times. She will be hosting a question-and-answer session with Jeffrey Eugenides at a reading and book signing at the Hugh Lane gallery, on Parnell Square in Dublin, on Saturday, November 5th, at 3pm. Tickets €3; booking on 01-2760059 or info@dubraybooks.ie