Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 904
 Coming of age in 20th century America March 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).
Middlesex February 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 topic February 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 it February 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.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 904
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