Jeffrey Eugenides romances the novel in ‘The Marriage Plot’

A new novel  by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides follows three college students graduating in the midst of an economic downturn. With unemployment around 10 percent, the characters try to find ways to cope –  moving home, busing tables, applying to graduate school. One flees the country entirely, running from the recession at home to volunteer in India. It sounds like a novel set in 2011, until Eugenides’ characters start calling each other from  land line  phones and writing letters home from abroad.   Eugenides’s new novel is set in 1982. It’s called “The Marriage Plot,” and  he joins us today in the studio.