The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Three young Brown University grads set out to begin their grown up lives in the 1980's.  Mitchell is driven by his theological studies to find a way to do good in the world and plans to go to India to work with Mother Teresa as part of a world tour.  He is in love with Madeline.  Madeline is the privileged daughter of a college president with a passion for 19th century romantic literature whose senior thesis revolved around the "marriage plot".  She is in love with Leonard.  Leonard is the brilliant scientist headed for a summer internship in a prestigious scientific community on Cape Cod.  He is beset by demons of the unmedicated bipolar sort and hopes to be saved by his love for Madeline.  They are all driven by their youthful idealism and a belief that their intellectual superiority has prepared them for the real world.  Ah the innocence of youth.  Just to keep this from becoming a total rant of romantic/angst fluff, Eugenides throws in enough literary and scientific references to make you wish you had your Funk and Wagnall's (it is the 80's) close at hand.  It is a reminder of that time in our lives when we stood on the brink of having it all and realized in mid jump that our destination was fog shrouded and ever shifting.  And contains just a bit too much of that angst.