What Mr. Eugenides is clearly striving for here is a reinvention of the marriage plot for a different age, though I suspect a number of female authors writing in the genre known as “chick lit” would lay claim to having done just this already. If the question, then, is one of literary credibility, it would be a bitter irony if, at a time of so many marriage plots conceived by women, the one that ends up getting the most critical accolades is the one written by a man.