Publication Date:June 5, 2002 Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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ISBN13: 9780312427733
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Condition: New
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Amazon.com Review "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:
Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons
Product Description A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.
Not for everyoneAugust 30, 2010 danifoswick I checked this book out from the library and started reading it because my oldest sister had read it for a class a few years ago; I thought I would enjoy the book because I interpretted it is a being a narrative of someone who is intersexed. I was disappointed.
I didn't finish the book, but read about 25% of it before I decided to abandon it. What this book does is follow the family history of the main character and their family, beginning with and going into much detail with Callie's grandparents, who are from Greece. I give this book only two stars not because the subject matter can be boring -- which it can be, depending on who you are -- but because of the 'voice' of the book, which to me is unmotivated and thin. Additionally, I feel the main character's 'change' later on in the book could have been written better. Overall the book does not make for an interesting read. It is definitely not a page-turner.
I personally do not reccommend this book, though I'm happy for those of you who have or will enjoy it. There are much better books out there.
Takes you inAugust 30, 2010 Story Jar(Western NY United States) Not many books have taken me in so much this summer. Complicated. Makes me want to know more about the various forms of hermaphroditic conditions. Well written. Worth the read for sure. Lots to talk about.
Captivating stroytellingAugust 23, 2010 Linda C. Wright(Viera, FL) I loved this book! I loved everything about it. The characters are rich, the story comedic, set against a backdrop of Detroit in the 20th century. Desdemona and Lefty come to America on a dream and a prayer. Their lives as immigrants making a life in the Motor City is full of ups and downs. The lives of their children Milton and Zoe emulate those of second generation Americans who are bound and determined to be only American and leave the old country ways behind.
And then there's Calliope who narrates. We learn the family's story through her or is it his eyes? When Callie tells the story her voice is distinctly different from when the male voice Cal is narrating. The author did a masterful job writing this character's voice. Callie, as a teenager, tells us of Desdemona taking to her bed, permanently. Then Callie and Cal's story really gets interesting. I thought the author had forgotten to resolve Desdemona. I kept flipping back thinking I'd missed something. But I couldn't have. Long gone are my days of drinking, reading a book before bed and then having to reread the same part again the next day because I couldn't remember what had happened.
I was ready to reduced my rating to a four from a five all because of Desdemona. And then, suddenly and without warning, the author explains where she's been and why. Desdemona, the keeper of the family secret kept it no more. It was a wonderful ending to a brilliant story. Middlesex won my reading heart and my writing mind, earning a rating of five out of five.
Linda C. Wright
Author
One Clown Short
Four Stars, not FiveAugust 20, 2010 Donald Knies(New York) THIS ESSAY WAS WRITTEN BY ONE OF MY HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH STUDENTS AND I AM SUBMITTING IT AS A REVIEW WITH HIS PERMISSION. IT REPRESENTS GOOD STUDENT THINKING ABOUT THIS INTERESTING NOVEL.
STUDENT AUTHOR: AMMAR SAMMA
There are certain aspects of Middlesex that Jeffrey Eugenides executes to near perfection, while I found that other portions of the novel were a bit rough around the edges.
One of my complaints with this novel is that is Eugenides spends far too long - over two hundred pages - building up the story of Desdemona, Lefty, Milton, and Tessie. While these anecdotes are entertaining and historically accurate, I believe that Eugenides spent a bit too long before truly revealing Calliope to the reader. Granted, the first few pages give a brief biography of Cal, and there are episodes with Cal and Julie sporadically throughout the novel, but the reader is not introduced to the full character until about halfway through the novel. As a result, I believe that the first two hundred pages, quite frankly, are a bit boring. While there are some exciting stories being told, namely with Jimmy Zizmo and the Nation of Islam, the history of Calliope's ancestors gets a bit bland after a while. However, the latter half of the novel was by far the superior half and I have many praises for how Eugenides presented Calliope's story.
From numerous trips to different doctors, to Calliope's hormonal issues, all the way to her sexual experimentation, Eugenides does a fine job in providing the reader with an in-depth analysis of all of Calliope's struggles as a young woman. All of these anecdotes provided me with what I had expected from a book about a hermaphrodite. It was extremely interesting to see how Calliope developed as a girl, while struggling with developmental and hormonal issues. It was not until Calliope's encounters with Obscure Object, which subsequently led to a trip to Dr. Peter Luce, when Calliope convinced herself that she is actually a male. From this point on, the narrator - Cal in his 40s - tells the story of Cal, a fifteen year old male who has run away from home. Without giving away too much of the plot for those of you who have not read the story, Cal runs into some interesting characters and situations in his somewhat failed attempt to live away from home.
Another complaint that I have about how the novel is written is that during my reading experience I felt that I was actually reading two different novels: one about Calliope's ancestors and one about her. I believe that this can be attributed to the fact that when Eugenides decides to introduce Calliope as a full-blown character, her ancestors essentially die off (both figuratively and literally). I felt as though there was little transition from "Book Two" to "Book Three" in the novel that bridged it together as the same story.
Regardless of the few flaws that are present in how Eugenides presented his work, I still found Middlesex to be a very compelling and worthwhile read. For the most part, Eugenides does a good job of drawing in the reader and keeping them interested.
Middle Sex is a book that's hard to put down.August 19, 2010 RowlettBoomer Praise the writing, and then bought one for a friend. She loved it also. Makes one think differently about why humans are the way we are. Is there a better way to think about men and women? Are there examples when sexual physical difference are really not so different? Yes. We are a species continuing to evolve.
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