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 FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. The breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of 1967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Coming of age in 20th century AmericaMarch 9, 2010 Gail Giarrusso(Marblehead, MA) I must have read this book 10 years ago and still think about it. This is a universal coming of age story. It's an immigrant tale. It's boy meets girl. It's a tale of Chicago from the 1950's to the present. It has wonderful sentences. It's ingenious. It's family. It's modern America. (It's also hilarious and made me cry).
MiddlesexFebruary 23, 2010 Kay(Austin, TX) What a book this was! I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the almost two weeks that I spent reading it. Wow! This is one of those books that I had been meaning to read for years, but I never picked it up. Jeffrey Eugenides' book is about a hermaphrodite, but it is also an enthralling family saga. I love that. Cal is one of those characters that I will remember always, along with that quirky Greek-American family: Milt, Tessie, Desdemona, Lefty, Chapter Eleven, Father Mike, Aunt Zo and on and on. I also enjoyed all the descriptions of the Greco-Turkish War, Detroit over several decades, San Francisco, just a host of things.
accomplishes the near-impossible- turning hermaphroditism into a bestselling topicFebruary 15, 2010 Robert Reid(Chicago, IL USA) I wouldn't give this book five stars based on my personal preference- the author's style and sense of humor relies too much on a somewhat irritating "cuteness" for my taste. But there's no way I could deny that this is a five star work by virtue of accomplishing something I would have thought impossible- turning a story about a hermaphrodite into an international bestseller.
To be sure, Eugenides' acute attention to detail is remarkable, and there's a fair bit of cleverness in the story of the Eugenides family over three generations. For example, the protagonist describes thinking about his parents: "Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh."
Eugenides' take on Detroit, the setting for much of the story, is responsible, if far too tame to counteract the mainstream media's fallacies that somewhat unfairly cripple the city's image today. He properly pins the blame for the city's destruction democratically on not just one race but "all these people coming from everywhere to cash in on Henry Ford's five-dollar-a-day promise," while acknowledging racist systemic factors holding down the black population ("Desdemona realized now why there was so much trash in the streets: the city didn't pick it up. White landlords let their apartment buildings fall into disrepair while they continued to raise the rents.").
Still, this felt like a timid work, entertaining but not enlightening or moving, until about page 400 when the protagonist finally visits a sexologist to clear up the mystery of his/her gender. At this point the book delves into a heavy handed background of the biological and cultural aspects of hermaphroditism, astutely concluding that "Sex is biological. Gender is cultural. The Navajo understand this." Much like the protagonist doesn't tell dates upfront that he/she is a hermaphrodite, the author patiently waits 400 pages to properly delve into the subject when the time is right.
OK, but not really new.February 11, 2010 Ellen Turner Lacko(CT, USA) 0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book arrived in good condition but was advertised as new. It was clear from the color of the pages that the book was not brand new.
200 pages in...I still don't get itFebruary 5, 2010 Derick Safarian(Martinez, CA USA) 0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I read the first 200 pages of this book and wonder what all the delirious reviews are about. The plot is going nowhere, and I just don't see where this book is going. To me, it's just dull and I can't seem to develop any interest in the story or the characters. I'm going to skip the remaining 325 pages of this bool.
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