Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides

book data

74,415 ratings, 3.99 average rating, 8,574 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		37%
4		36%
3		18%
2		5%
1		2%

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published

September 16th 2003 (first published 2002) by Picador USA

binding

Paperback, 529 pages

literary awards

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2003)

isbn

0312422156 (isbn13: 9780312422158)

description

"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 emerge...more

[close] "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

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07/29/07

Trina rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2003

I got off the bus from Bumbershoot around 1 AM, exhausted. Convinced that even the cars speeding past my window couldn’t keep me from this night’s rest, I opened the door to a stench of exceptional vileness. Not a dead stench, or a spoiled food stench. This was the stench of sewage. From a spot in the center of the living room I surveyed the apartment and discovered the source: the commode and the area around it were covered in yuck. I dialed up the landlord. The exchange went somethin...more

Like this review? yes (97 people liked it)

9 comments

09/26/07

Andrew rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

This would have been better as an NPR story or an episode of "This American Life" than a novel. Or maybe if someone other than Eugenides had written it. An interesting idea, and a few engrossing sex scenes (I like the "crocus" and the peep-tank, and the whole long flirtation with The Object drew me in completely), and a nice two pages toward the end when Julie accepts Cal for what he is. But the prose was awful: frequent maneuvers like "And me? That's simple. I was ...more This would have been better as an NPR story or an episode of "This American Life" than a novel. Or maybe if someone other than Eugenides had written it. An interesting idea, and a few engrossing sex scenes (I like the "crocus" and the peep-tank, and the whole long flirtation with The Object drew me in completely), and a nice two pages toward the end when Julie accepts Cal for what he is. But the prose was awful: frequent maneuvers like "And me? That's simple. I was . . . " are really unacceptable. And "Sing, Muse, of Greek ladies and their battle against unsightly hair!" is about as funny as poop.

Except for the incest, the long family-history plot was like a mashup of immigrant dramas from cable TV: Greek family barely escapes home country to make it to the United States, where they wander through 20th century history in a dull procession of unmotivated Gumpy forays into Wikipedia that have no effect whatsoever on their character development. (Now we'll shove these characters through Prohibition! mass production! the Detroit race riots! The partition of Cyprus! San Francisco hippies! the tragedy of Michael Dukakis's helmet moment! and . . . the founding of the Nation of Islam!)

The incest part of the story was good in the beginning -- the early love scenes between the grandparents are wonderful -- and then impressively tedious (Desdemona feels guilt! and then . . . she feels guilt again!). The metaphors are embarassingly bad: The hermaphrodite lives on a street named Middlesex, and eventually finds reconciliation of the two sides of herself in Berlin after reunification. Why not have Desdemona live on "I Feel Guilty For Fucking My Brother Boulevard"?

Cal remains completely undefined as a character, except in terms of her understandably tough time figuring out her own sexuality; I couldn't come up with more than one adjective to define her, and "confused" isn't much of a character. Everyone else in the book fails to exist at all. Jimmy Zizmo turns out to be the founder of the Nation of Islam? Eugenides says self-importantly that "you've probably guessed" that -- no! Not only did I not guess it, it doesn't make any sense, logical or emotional, and it's completely uninteresting. Why not have him turn out to be Richard Nixon? Uncle Mike turns out to be a psychopath who extorts his own family? Why? Who cares?

Cal's lack of voice or character is the worst thing: if you write a book about someone who lives in a world that's somehow dramatically different than your reader's -- a world where gender is fluid, undefined -- you should show us that world. Cal has no voice, no face, no identity. What voice there is is completely inconsistent with her behavior -- the current Cal is reticent, shy, depressed, lonely, and retiring; our narrator is open, boisterous, discursive, ironic, omniscient for no particular reason, and irritatingly jokey.

And the book no more has ideas about sexuality than it does about Cal's character. As one reviewer said, the most disappointing thing about the book is it ends up reinforcing stereotyped, dumb ideas about gender (like "Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testosterone level" -- as if there were no gays). Callie's pursuit of The Object doesn't make her question categories, it just convinces her she's a boy. There is no middle sex here; there's no middle ground; it's more gawking than Tiresias-like insight. (less)

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07/14/07

Peter added it

Read in July, 2007

Don't judge a book by its cover.

I'd seen this book on the shelves of a number of friends and in the arms of a number of travelers, so I decided to pick it up. The title, "Middlesex", suggested English countryside to me. On the cover was what looked like a steamship, and a quote on the back began "Part Tristram Shanty, part-Ishmael..." So I came to the foolish conclusion that this was some 19th century English seafaring novel. (Typical.)

I couldn't ha...more Don't judge a book by its cover.

I'd seen this book on the shelves of a number of friends and in the arms of a number of travelers, so I decided to pick it up. The title, "Middlesex", suggested English countryside to me. On the cover was what looked like a steamship, and a quote on the back began "Part Tristram Shanty, part-Ishmael..." So I came to the foolish conclusion that this was some 19th century English seafaring novel. (Typical.)

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Middlesex is the story of a hermaphrodite who grew up as Calliope but discovered in her adolescence that she is actually more Cal than Calliope. More specifically, Middlesex (the title takes on a new meaning now) is the story of three generations of a Greek family and the incestuous genetic and social history that enables the existence of Cal, who narrates the story.

The novel is epic. It spans nearly a century and traces the Stephanides family from battle-torn Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, across an Atlantic voyage, from the street corners of Detroit, through World War II, and out to the suburban haven of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The novel incorporates details upon details from all different spheres of life, dropping name brands from different time periods and regions and incorporating specialized jargon from a wide range of fields--Jeffrey Eugenides must have done an immense, immense amount of research during the writing process.

And the scope is as broad as the focus is often narrow. Over the course of 20th century, the Stephanides family responds to and participates in political, social, and cultural movements, and through them, we feel not only the sweep of a small Greek enclave, but also the sweep of a nation's growth as it engages Prohibition, World War II, the idealism of the 50s, the revolutions of the 60s and 70s, and more. The story is as much about the conflicts within a country as it is about a family trying to face its secrets, past and present.

Through it all, Cal, as a narrator, is clever and endearing. A story about a hermaphrodite sounds freakish at first, and there are moments in the novel when Cal faces the visceral or fearful reactions that might instinctively rise in anyone. But, from page one, Eugenides clears the air, setting us on a fresh foundation, and we discover a character who faces familiar childhood and adolescent trials and tribulations--we discover the humanity of a character one might otherwise find defined as a monster.

Do I recommend it? Yes. It's a good tale for the modern age.
Would I teach it? Not likely. At 527 pages, it's just too long.
Lasting impression? Epic. I'll remember it for the incredible depth and breadth of knowledge it demonstrates. This novel impresses upon me the amount of research that an author must do to prepare for a serious work.
(less)

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05/17/08

Jason Pettus rated it:

(review of isbn 0374199698)

Read in May, 2008

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classics" for the first time, then write reports on whether or not they deserve the label

Book #15: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

The story in a nutshell:
The tale of "the most famous her...more

Like this review? yes (21 people liked it)

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09/04/07

Kelly rated it:

Read in September, 2007

Would have given this book two more stars except for one resounding disappointment I can't get past. I thought that one of the most important aspects of the book was entirely skipped over by the author without any explanation.

*Spoiler Alert* It's probably not a spoiler, but what I have to say may alleviate some of the intrigue - you have been warned.

I really, really, really wanted to know why Calliope 'chose' to live life as Cal once she learned that she was a biologi...more Would have given this book two more stars except for one resounding disappointment I can't get past. I thought that one of the most important aspects of the book was entirely skipped over by the author without any explanation.

*Spoiler Alert* It's probably not a spoiler, but what I have to say may alleviate some of the intrigue - you have been warned.

I really, really, really wanted to know why Calliope 'chose' to live life as Cal once she learned that she was a biological male. It was, arguably, the most important and perhaps only choice she->he had in the entire book, and the author just skips that part. This transitionless transition to living as a male stands in stark comparison to the rest of the book which does a competent job of developing each of the main characters throughout their lives...and for every other seemingly inexplicable action the reader understands the characters enough to know WHY they acted in a certain way.

The Calliope->Cal change is so abrupt in the book, and lacks any of the personal insight that the rest of the book teems with...it's almost like the author got tired of writing by the time the transition comes about (quite late in the book), and he just wanted to be done with it. Perhaps the author didn't expand on the "choice" to live as Cal because his point is supposed to be that it really wasn't a choice. But I would even have liked to know why Calliope didn't think living as Cal was a choice and was instead a biological or personal inevitability...but no aspect of her choice/lack of choice was addressed.

Inappropriate foreshortening aside, I do think that the writing is often quite eloquent. I certainly would have appreciated fewer of the cliche metaphors for change/new beginnings/etc. The author does take the obvious to new heights, however, when he would state for the reader too obtuse to understand that the egg being described actually represents an immigrant beginning life in her new land by ending the paragraph with something like, "...you see she was that egg." (less)

Like this review? yes (19 people liked it)

9 comments

06/10/07

Trevor rated it:

Read in July, 2007

"When I told my life story to Dr. Luce, the place where he invariably got interested was when I came to Clementine Stark. Luce didn't care about criminally smitten grandparents or silkworm boxes or serenading clarinets. To a certain extent, I understand. I even agree."
I agree too. This quote comes from page 263 and is really where the story picks up and gets into the subject the book promises--Cal's life as a hermaphrodite. Honestly, while the first 263 pages were inter...more "When I told my life story to Dr. Luce, the place where he invariably got interested was when I came to Clementine Stark. Luce didn't care about criminally smitten grandparents or silkworm boxes or serenading clarinets. To a certain extent, I understand. I even agree."
I agree too. This quote comes from page 263 and is really where the story picks up and gets into the subject the book promises--Cal's life as a hermaphrodite. Honestly, while the first 263 pages were interesting and had some important developing points, it could have been distilled a great deal. Eugenides is a great, fluid writer--very witty. But dang, he's wordy. I guess after reading several books by Cormac McCarthy I'm bound to get distracted by verbosity. I'm not saying I don't like long--my favorite book is The Brothers Karamazov--I just don't like all the superfluous words.
Still, the book is compelling so far. I'm not as driven to read it as I think I should be, but I don't find myself putting it down after every paragraph to check my email either.

UPDATE: I have finished the book. In the end, I felt like it didn't deliver. I see a lot of connections Eugendides is making about identity, but they didn't seem developed. In fact, there were many symbols throughout the book that were very clever but ultimately seemed to be only that--a device used to show cleverness and not to really further the plot. Another problem I had with the book was the fact that Eugenides tells too much about his characters and yet I still feel like it is underdeveloped. For example, he has great characters in mind and some great episodes to show how they feel, but then he simply runs through the story and then tells you how the character felt--I wanted to feel how the characters felt.
I enjoyed two things about the book. First, the Forrest Gump-like trek through American history. There are really some fascinating episodes in this book. And Eugenides does an excellent job ellaborating on them. Sometimes I felt like he should have written an essay on American history rather than this novel. The second thing I enjoyed was Eugenides sly, clever writing. I know that above I said that some things seemed to be there just to showcase the author's wit, but some of those things were really clever and enjoyable. The writing kind of reminded me of Jim Carrey's acting: at moments it was brilliant, hysterical, and spot on; but at other moments it was just too much, needed to be toned down, better controlled.
As I said, this book didn't deliver for me. I liked it because of its promise. The idea is fascinating. However, as talented as Mr. Eugenides is, a little more control would be nice.(less)

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02/20/08

Kim rated it:

bookshelves: contemporary

Read in April, 2008

This book has all the major players....

Incest, war, teenage girl-on-girl experimental sex, deadheads, undescended testes, and a 2 inch penis.

Yep, it took me all of one chapter to realize that Middlesex was referring to something besides a county in England.

Best Part: Answering Maurice's question "What's that about?" then watching him squirm and cross his legs in obvious pain.

Worst Part: Glaring Oprah sticker on the cover telling m...more

Like this review? yes (12 people liked it)

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05/08/07

Taylor rated it:

bookshelves: borrow-ed-or-ing, buy, desert-island-picks, favorites, fiction, recommended

Read in May, 2007

recommends it for: everyone with an open mind, and even some of those with closed ones.

Mr. Eugenides can do everything, or at least I am convinced of such after reading Middlesex.

I passed on this book for a long time. I kept picking it up in bookstores and putting it down. I've seen quotes from it everywhere, all of which were beautiful, and kept hearing wonderful things about it from friends. To be perfectly honest, what kept me from picking it up in the subject: a hermaphrodite. I think of myself as someone with an open mind, but the thing is that I just wasn't sure ...more Mr. Eugenides can do everything, or at least I am convinced of such after reading Middlesex.

I passed on this book for a long time. I kept picking it up in bookstores and putting it down. I've seen quotes from it everywhere, all of which were beautiful, and kept hearing wonderful things about it from friends. To be perfectly honest, what kept me from picking it up in the subject: a hermaphrodite. I think of myself as someone with an open mind, but the thing is that I just wasn't sure if I'd be able to relate to much in this story. I made a very foolish assumption, and I'm quite embarassed about it.

Middlesex is a slow burner (my new favorite term). It begins with the story of Cal/Calliope's grandparents, which seems unnecessary in the beginning, but which makes more sense with each passing page. The story then passes on to the parents, then Cal.

A couple pages in, Eugenides describes a rather gruesome scene, and this was my signal that this is a no-holds-barred kind of author. He goes there. (This isn't to say that the book is filled with gruesome moments, just that he's not afraid to use them when he must.)

To address the smoking gun, so to speak, yes, the main character is a Hermaphrodite. Though the reader knows it throughout the book, the main character doesn't know until they're older. It seems incredulous, but Eugenides makes it work, and makes this believable. He was smart to do things this way, because I was on the edge of my seat waiting for Calliope to discover the truth. And, most likely, he keeps a lot more not-so-open minded readers this way.

There's a very frank beauty about this book - he doesn't gloss over anything, but despite the many struggles of the three generations, he doesn't feel it necessary to make his reality very bleak, either. Even when the book is at its darkest, most depressing, you're filled with sadness, but also with hope.

The other great thing about Middlesex, aside from its incredible cast of characters is how well it captures society in history - first in Detroit in the '20s (a more bleak picture than '20s of The Great Gatsby), then the '60s. The '20s are focused on the invention of the automobile - the people putting them together as opposed to the people driving them, and the impact that being part of an assembly line and big business had on people, and of course, prohibition. With the '60s, Eugenides tackles race so marvelously - the chapter about the Detroit riots is probably the best in the book, for all of the anxiety and imagery that he evokes. This book is really just as much about middle class America and family ties as it is about sexuality.

Don't make the mistake that I made by continually passing on this book - read it!(less)

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02/03/08

Martine rated it:

bookshelves: family-drama, gay-lesbian-different, modern-fiction, north-american, psychological-drama

Read in February, 2008

I'm torn on this book. On the one hand, I loved the story, which is, as another reviewer put it, 'the greatest, most incestuous Greek epic since the Iliad'. On the other hand, I had serious problems with some of the writing. I haven't seen my quibbles mentioned anywhere else, so I guess I'm alone on them. Or am I?

In a nutshell, Middlesex is the story of Cal, a Greek American who was born a hermaphrodite and raised as a girl before finally realising he was boy as a teenager. In about ...more I'm torn on this book. On the one hand, I loved the story, which is, as another reviewer put it, 'the greatest, most incestuous Greek epic since the Iliad'. On the other hand, I had serious problems with some of the writing. I haven't seen my quibbles mentioned anywhere else, so I guess I'm alone on them. Or am I?

In a nutshell, Middlesex is the story of Cal, a Greek American who was born a hermaphrodite and raised as a girl before finally realising he was boy as a teenager. In about five hundred occasionally brilliant pages, Cal traces back his family history (which is rife with inbreeding) to see how he came to be the sort of almost-male he is. In so doing, he not only paints a loving picture of the memorable and colourful Stephanides clan, whose men have rather special ways of wooing women, but of a changing world, all the way from the Greek part of early-twentieth-century Turkey through mid-twentieth-century Detroit to post-Wall Berlin. What with its focus on different conflicts in different eras, the book is quite epic in scope. Yet it is also quite personal, with the social and racial conflicts played out in the world at large reflecting the much more private conflict that is going on within Cal. Both the epic and the intimate aspects of the novel are funny, poignant and tragic, and for that Jeffrey Eugenides deserves applause. Lots of it.

But. But. But.

I have to admit to finding Eugenides an awfully inconsistent writer. While he undeniably has a flair for story-telling, he also has a mad tendency to change tenses and perspectives, to the point where it actually quite took me out of the story. I dislike stories which switch back and forth between past tense and present tense within a matter of paragraphs at the best of times; if these stories also come equipped with narrators who constantly switch points of view, I get annoyed. And this is exactly what happens in Middlesex. Not only is Cal an omniscient first-person narrator who shares with the reader details from older relatives' lives which he has no way of knowing, but he also has a maddening tendency to randomly refer to himself in the third person, which results in sudden bursts of 'Calliope this' and 'Calliope that' in what is essentially a first-person narrative. To a certain extent, I can see why Cal would do this, looking back from a distance at a person he used to be but no longer is, but still, I found it annoying, so much so that I occasionally found myself wanting to scream at the narrator to drop all that third-person shit and stick with the first person, for God's sake. I don't like feeling like shouting at narrators, so that's where one star went. The other one I deducted for the weak ending, which felt rather rushed to me after the perfectly lavish set-up. Is it me, or would Middlesex have been a better book with slightly more information on what happened to Cal between the ages of 17 and 41? With an actual, you know, ending and all that?

I'll stop complaining here to end on a positive note. Despite my quibbles, I enjoyed most of Middlesex -- especially the first half, which is superb. I quite like Eugenides' brand of modern mythology, so I think I'll give The Virgin Suicides a shot, too. I rather liked the film, so I'm actually quite surprised I haven't read the book yet...
(less)

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09/11/07

Jason rated it:

If I didn't hate putting books down so much, I never would have found out how thoroughly unimpressive this really is. I almost never have the urge to just stop reading a book, but this book managed it. In fact, there is not another instance in memory (not including books like Ann Coulter that I give disgusted glances at in the store).

Eugenides' writing is verbose, uncontrolled, and surprisingly content-less given its weighty appearances. I actually found the family story more enga...more

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09/10/08

Seth rated it:

(review of isbn 0676975658)

bookshelves: general-fiction

Read in September, 2008

"So, what's going on, wha hoppen, I don't understand, I thought we were giving this 5 stars?" "Yah, I thought maybe we would, early on, but we're not." "We're not? What's wrong? I thought you loved the book!" "I did! There's just--there's some problems in the later part. There's a structural problem, it affects the linearity, there's a broken-back feel once we shift to--" Oh you and your 'linear', always with the linear nonsense, don't be so male, t...more "So, what's going on, wha hoppen, I don't understand, I thought we were giving this 5 stars?" "Yah, I thought maybe we would, early on, but we're not." "We're not? What's wrong? I thought you loved the book!" "I did! There's just--there's some problems in the later part. There's a structural problem, it affects the linearity, there's a broken-back feel once we shift to--" Oh you and your 'linear', always with the linear nonsense, don't be so male, there's more to life than a straight line or a clean beginning middle and end! This book is circular, and rounded at the free ends, and it has the freedom to flower in different directions, and try to be all-encompassing...y'know a little Gaia, a little chaos wouldn't hurt--" "Excuse me, I'll do the interrupting around here, if you don't mind. After all, this novel, amongst it's many laudable qualities, does throw out some pretty damning generalizations about male behaviour. For a book that deals with the danger of classifying things--" "Ha! Typical male behaviour! Classif--" "Excuse, would you let me interrupt please? Thank you..."

"Now, as I was saying, and more to the point than any quibbles I have about some minor male-bashing: I don't think we have a clean split, when the book seeks to transfer its attentions from Everyone Who Came Before Callie, to Callie herself, I mean when Callie becomes the main focus. That's the broken-back quality I'm talking about." "Listen!--" "Calm down." "No, listen--don't tell me to calm down, Mr. Logos is all!--the book wants to deal with Callie's extended family first, the ancestors, and how we get from point A to point B. I would think you would appreciate that line of succession approach, and it's beautiful! Because we care so much about the grandparents and their trials and how they find this shocking love, but they don't care about any genetic...repercussions or whatever." "Well, yes, that's my point, that's the bottom line here! Characters that are central to the story, and that we grow with, and invest in, well they're suddenly swept aside, and they have these odd background subplots, a few of which seem kind of hokey or outlandish just for shock effect--" ""Yes, but then we get Callie, as a result of all that is happened, and we needed to know how she got formed the way she is, and and and--" "The bottom line is--" "Let me finish! Her Greek roots are important too, I mean how can you NOT love the depth of the full story here. All you want is some teenage angst from some tortured soul who--well I don't know what I wanna say anymore, so what were you saying?"

"Look, the book has lots of emotional power all the way through, partly from the way characters do learn to adapt and kind of under-react or internalize their reactions. This is a strong family that adapts to some pretty strange and sometimes terrible stuff. I just felt that you can't build up characters the way the book does in the early-going so thoroughly, and then have them kind of hanging around in the background for the second half. There's something there that I never liked. Cool structural shifts are all well and good, but it seemed like...well, sometimes, like we were into another book. And it doesn't help that Callie is kind of the apex of adaptive behaviour. Interesting character--witty, great narrator, feeling more on the inside than she shows to the world, and all that, but, uh, again, maybe another thing that is double-edged is the choice to have a main character who is, able to conceal emotion so well. Add to that--"

"Waitaminute! Before you go adding to that, I think you're being unfair. We do see Callie get very emotional at certain crisis points, like when she really thinks she's a 'MONSTER', and at other times when she cries or is rejected, or--" "Yes, but that's all secret and internal and so forth. Once she's into a full struggle over her own identity, and the problems with defining it, uh, it's very run-and-hide. And that's fine, that's probably even normal. But, then, there the scenes, especially with family, where you might want to ratchet up the emotional factor and really bring things to the fore. I mean everybody seems so calm about everything all the time, and when they don't, they sneak off and cry, or if they can't do that, they just make jokes and be whimsical. Another crisis averted. It's a weird book that way. I liked it, but, huh, how do I say this without sounding like if I re-wrote it I could give it a better review..." "You do sound like that! You sound like 'If I wrote this scene there'd be a big argument and blah blah blah, this is how it should be and I'm a better writer than a Pulitzer-Prize winning veteran, blah blah blah'! That's how you sound right now!"

"Huh. Well you sound like a nag. Anyway, all I'm saying this: I don't, as a reader, always like to have my emotional reactions suppressed just when they're building up a head of steam, by the writer suppressing the emotional impact of a scene. We divert to humour, we divert to an infatuation, let's say--which, again, gives some great writing, and some great scenes--and then we're running away somewhere to avoid confrontation, or whatever, and then more and more the book is threatening to have a rushed ending, yer yer precious 'circle of life completed/Gaia rules" shindig or whatever--" "You're babbling. You don't usually babble. Don't you usually ream me for babbling?" "Look, okay. Thought organization time. Huh, okay. What is up with that goofy ransom money, slow-speed chase nonsense near the end, right when we should really be getting down deep into the characters' souls, or at least the main character's soul, since everyone else is kind of lingering on the outskirts. I really wasn't prepared for that whole pulp-novel, crime element that suddenly reared up. That didn't work for me at all! It didn't seem properly set up, for one thing, and the character who was after the money, uhhhh, didn't seem to have that side to his or her personality, before that. That really seemed like a writer reaching for potboiler sequence near the end. I mean, what do you say about that??"

"Welll, it wasn't my favourite part, but I don't think it was cheap. And it wasn't totally a surprise--I think that person who was doing bad things had been shown to be resentf--" "Oh, PLEASE!" "'Oh, PLEASE', yourself, Mountus Interruptus! Okay, so you hated the book then, maybe we should give it 1 star!" "Oh no, I loved it; I mean, I couldn't stop reading it. It's wild; it's brash and daring, and the writer fully commits to a design and has the guts to carry it off. And most of the stuff that I see as sabotage is probably the stuff that everyone else loves. It's--I'm--I'm just very structure-oriented. Or, I don't know. It's--It's like a beautiful waterfall that suddenly changes course a little too much for my aesthetic tastes. It felt truncated as we had to shift to Callie and her life, and all her running and internalizing. That, and a few oddball scenes that went for humour when I thought maybe we were gonna get down and dirty with the emotio--" "You've never been down and dirty in your life! You wouldn't know down and dirty if it--" "Alright, this review is over. Four stars, I'm dominant, you're recessive, I say 4 stars, enough's enough, go away."

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11/21/07

Virna rated it:

recommends it for: Oprah fans, Avid readers

Jeffrey Eugenides uses Calliope as his Muse – according to the Greek mythology, she’s the Muse of epic poetry –, as a narrator of his story. He must be a fan of the Greek myths as the novel’s full of allusion to Homer and the Illiad. The narrator eloquently unfold the story behind Calliope’s transformation, like the Chinese Princess Si Ling-Chi, as Eugenides puts it: upon discovering the unraveling of a silkworm cocoon that fell into her teacup, handing its loose end to her maidservant...more Jeffrey Eugenides uses Calliope as his Muse – according to the Greek mythology, she’s the Muse of epic poetry –, as a narrator of his story. He must be a fan of the Greek myths as the novel’s full of allusion to Homer and the Illiad. The narrator eloquently unfold the story behind Calliope’s transformation, like the Chinese Princess Si Ling-Chi, as Eugenides puts it: upon discovering the unraveling of a silkworm cocoon that fell into her teacup, handing its loose end to her maidservant, who in turn took the loose end through the Forbidden City, and into the countryside a half mile away before the cocoon ran out. Eugenides breaks his novel into four parts, and retraces the journey of Cal’s grandparents from Asia Minor to America.

The first part belongs to Desdemona and Lefty, retelling their love story. The second begins with their new life in Detroit, when Lefty was unfairly forced to give up his job in the Ford Motor Co. and went to work for his cousin’s husband, Jimmy Zizmo, to help him smuggle liquors from Canada into the country. Calliope enters the story in the third part, being born to Milton and Tessie. On the day of her birth, her grandfather Lefty had a stroke, and incident that brought Desdemona both sadness and relief, as Eugenides writes ‘Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.’ The narrator grew up against the backdrop of the 1967 riot that set her father’s first business, the Zebra Room, into blaze, but ironically brought them up from the ruins as the three insurances that he’s been holding finally paid him up enough money to let him start another business and bought a new house in Middlesex, away from what was left of Detroit. In Middlesex, a house without normal doors and lots of windows, the narrator finally begins to learn about herself, and the opposite sex. In that very house she realized that she’s standing between two opposite poles, male and female, the middle of both sexes, and she’s neither. Milton and Tessie eventually discovered Calliope’s condition of being a hermaphrodite in the final part. The narrator enters his own story intermittently, as Cal or Calliope brought the readers in and out of his present-day time, the present being the time he is forty-one and mulling over his recent meeting with a Japanese-American lady in Berlin, the love of his life after the Obscure Object. Eugenides expertly describes Desdemona's love story as she is also the main character who always appears in almost every chapter, as she holds the key of Cal’s physical condition.

As readers go back to the first chapter, some of the story’s key elements that are mentioned in the beginning can be finally put together into a beautiful story of one’s life journey. It’s no surprise that the writer spent 9 years to finish the novel, and eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for his work in 2002. One of Eugenides’ strength comes from his Greek roots – he freely uses the Greek mythology as a tool to weave his story. He doesn’t leave a room for the slightest gap, every chapter is full to the brim with physical and emotional details about his characters, the story settings and many relevant information. Finally, he never allows his readers to take pity of Cal’s condition, rather he takes them to identify with his characters, because in the end, we are humans after all, regardless of our physical conditions.
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03/24/08

Stacey rated it:

(review of isbn 1593977344)

bookshelves: audiobooks-ive-heard

Read in May, 2008

recommended to Stacey by: audible.com reviews
recommends it for: audiobook lovers

I've read quite a few reviews of this book saying that it was patchy in places, or it bogged down in the historical parts, the character not being believable in others, etc.

I have not read the novel, so perhaps this is true. As an audiobook however, it was magnificent. The story was compelling, the history inseparable from the development of Calliope, and the voice of the reader - Kristoffer Tabori - was genius. His character variations made an interesting concept into a fascinating...more

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07/24/08

Maureen rated it:

This Greek family saga, as narrated by a hermaphrodite, has many pages, but I flicked through them easily like so many moistened labia. Moments of tragedy lay concealed within, like undescended testes, but warm humour dominated, swelling forth like a budding penis.

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02/08/09

Alison rated it:

bookshelves: contemporaryfiction, fivestars, oprah, pulitzerprize, rgbookclub

Read in March, 2009

"Why?" she kept crying softly, shaking her head..."Why did you run away, honey?"
"I had to."
"Don't you think it would have been easier just to stay the way you were?"
I lifted my face and looked into my mother's eyes. And I told her: "This is the way I was."

Most people know that Jeffrey Eugenides's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Middlesex" is the story of a girl who was "born twice"--...more "Why?" she kept crying softly, shaking her head..."Why did you run away, honey?"
"I had to."
"Don't you think it would have been easier just to stay the way you were?"
I lifted my face and looked into my mother's eyes. And I told her: "This is the way I was."

Most people know that Jeffrey Eugenides's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Middlesex" is the story of a girl who was "born twice"--first as a baby girl and later as a teenage boy. Our narrator was born with 5-alpha reductase deficiency, a genetic mutation leaving some affected individuals with ambiguous genitalia. As we journey with him through his happy childhood, and painful and confusing adolescence, his voice is endearing and his feelings, put to paper, are more familiar and universal than you might think.

Our narrator doesn't get to his own story until more than halfway into the book. The first half takes us back to his grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona, as they fall in love against the backdrop of the 1922 war between Greece and Turkey and flee to start a new life in America. Later we learn of his parents, Milton and Tessie, as they grow up and wed during an era of economic recession and race riots in Detroit. The homeplace that they buy and where our narrator spends his childhood is called "Middlesex", which I believe was meant to symbolize more than just a house. Its description is that of a country, a society re-defining its norms...

Though we had ruined it with our colonial furniture, it was still the beacon it was intended to be, a place with few interior walls, divested of the formalities of bourgeois life, a place designed for a new type of human being, who would inhabit a new world. I couldn't help feeling, of course, that the person was me, and all the others like me...

As these three generations gain and lose the "American Dream" time and time again, I was reminded how history seems to repeat itself. Life in suburbia and during a Recession in the 60's...war...strained race relations all sounded familiar, as these are some of the same problems facing modern Americans today. Will we ever evolve past some of these issues? Or will they always come around again, generation after generation?

The real star of this novel is the narrator and his voice--so I guess the true star is the brilliant writer Eugenides for this amazingly-written, endearing family saga. I have read several Pulitzer Prize winners that have left me untouched, however... I wish they could have given him this one twice.

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07/10/07

Ferina rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2007

Calliope Stephanides, menjalani kehidupannya selama 14 tahun sebagai seorang perempuan. Ia tidka menyadari ada keanehan dalam dirinya, sampai ketika ia beranjak dewasa, ia menyadari dirinya berbeda dengan teman-teman perempuan lainnya. Di usia dua belas tahun, ia belum mendapatkan menstruasi, berdada rata dan bertubuh lebih kurus dan jangkung. Di atas bibirnya, mulai ditumbuhi rambut tipis. Dan, ia lebih cenderung menyukai teman perempuan dibanding laki-laki. Keluarganya, terutama ibunya, Tessie...more Calliope Stephanides, menjalani kehidupannya selama 14 tahun sebagai seorang perempuan. Ia tidka menyadari ada keanehan dalam dirinya, sampai ketika ia beranjak dewasa, ia menyadari dirinya berbeda dengan teman-teman perempuan lainnya. Di usia dua belas tahun, ia belum mendapatkan menstruasi, berdada rata dan bertubuh lebih kurus dan jangkung. Di atas bibirnya, mulai ditumbuhi rambut tipis. Dan, ia lebih cenderung menyukai teman perempuan dibanding laki-laki. Keluarganya, terutama ibunya, Tessie Stephanides, juga mulai khawatir mengapa Calliope belum juga datang bulan.

Suatu hari, ia mengalami sebuah kecelakaan, dan dokter yang memeriksa menemukan adanya sebuah keanehan. Calliope pun dibawa ke dokter lain di New York untuk pemeriksaan lebih lanjut. Terungkaplah sebuah fakta bahwa Calliope adalah seorang Hermaphrodite alias berkelamin ganda. Saran Dr. Luce agar Calliope melakukan operasi ternyata ditolak.

Mulailah babak baru dalam kehidupan Calliope sebagai Cal Stephanides.

Buku ini lebih mirip sebuah memoar, sebuah kisah kehidupan seorang Cal Stephanides. Cal menuturkan sejarah keluarganya, awal mula terjainya kelainan genetis yang memungkinkan terjadinya sosok seorang Cal Stephanides.

Sejarah dimulai di sebuah wilayah di Yunani. Desdemona Stephanides tinggal bersama adiknya, Lefty Stephanides. Desdemona benar-benar mengabdikan hidupnya untuk merawat adiknya, sesuai janjinya pada ibunya. Bahkan berulang kali Desdemona mencarikan jodoh untuk adiknya, tapi Lefty ternyata tidak tertarik pada mereka.

Ternyata, tinggal hanya berdua, tidur bersebelahan, menimbulkan keanehan pada diri mereka. Rasa sayang, rasa tertarik bukan lagi semata karena mereka saudara kandung, tapi lebih dari itu. Rasa sayang yang timbul lebih arah rasa terhadap seorang wanita dan laki-laki.

Menjelang pelarian mereka dari Yunani ke Amerika akibat penyerbuan Turki, Lefty melamar Desdemona. Desdemona merima lamaran adiknya. Di kapal yang membawa mereka ke Amerika, Desdemona dan Lefty memainkan scenario sebagai pasangan yang baru saling mengenal dan jatuh cinta dalam di dalam pelayaran itu. Mereka pun menikah di kapal itu.

Di Amerika, mereka tinggal di rumah sepupu mereka, Sourmelina. Tidak ada yang tahu bahwa mereka adalah kakak beradik, kecuali Sourmelina.

Ketika hamil, Desdemona sempat diliputi kekhawatiran akan melahirkan anak-anak yang tidak normal. Tapi, ternyata hal itu tidak terbukti. Milton dan Zoe lahir dengan sehat dan normal. Tapi, kekhawatiran itu timbul lagi, ketika Milton tertarik ada Tessie, anak Sourmelina. Meskipun, Desdemona sudah menjodohkan Tessie dengan Mike, seorang calon pastur, Milton dan Tessie pun akhirnya menikah. Mike pun akhirnya menikah dengan Zoe.

Dari Milton dan Tessie, lahirnya Calliope Stephanides. Menurut ramalan sendok Desdemona, jenis kelamin si jabang bayi adalah laki-laki. Tapi Milton dan Tessie tidak mau percaya begitu saja, karena mereka berdua mendambakan anak perempuan setelah anak laki-laki pertama mereka, Chapter Eleven. Tapi, oleh Dr. Phil, dokter yang menangani persalinan, ditegaskan bahwa bayi itu berjenis kelamin perempuan. Berakhirlah masa kejayaan ramalan sendok Desdemona.

Calliope pun menjalani kehidupan sebagai seorang perempuan. Keanehan di awal masa remaja dianggap sebagai tanda bahwa pertumbuhan Calliope lebih lambat dari teman-temannya.

Dalam novel yang dibagi dalam empat bagian besar ini, Eugenides menjadikan Cal sebagai penutur. Bagian yang unik adalah waktu Cal cerita tentang ‘antrian’ di alam ‘sana’ sebelum akhirnya pemenangnya adalah Chapter Eleven. Bukan hanya itu, Eugenides juga dengan teliti dan sabar menguraikan sejarah selama rentang waktu 50 tahun. Benar-benar sebuah cerita yang menguraikan perjalanan keluarga selama 3 generasi.
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05/24/08

Eileen rated it:

Read in January, 2007

I was one of two members of my ten-person Book Group who could not get through this book. Guess that means we are a minority...

I read about one-third. I could not get past the incest that the author was trying to pass off as "ok." I think that John Irving handles the topic much more honestly in "Hotel New Hampshire."

It's just another case of, "No two people ever read the same book."

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09/26/07

Jessica rated it:

bookshelves: aborted-efforts

recommends it for: intersex readers who are amused by big quirky ethnic families

People love this book. I could not read this book. I could not get four pages into this book. It just annoyed the living crap out of me.

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

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08/30/07

Lane rated it:

I should probably reread this. I should definitely explain the two stars, especially since the first half or so of this book, the sections set before the birth of the "main" character" really engaged me. OK, I'm really tired of the family-secrets-will-out-and-in-really-fucking-unexpected-ways theme...but Eugenides hooked me for a long while and I didn't mind. But the last section of the book, the section that made it "controversial" (yawn) bored and annoyed me. (Real...more

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08/02/07

Jeff rated it:

recommends it for: People who love to breath.

Okay, seriously: I loved this book. It was big sweeping, heartfelt, funny, sad, it had everything you could want in a book, or hell even a lifetime. I wanted to read it forever and ever (but then none of the other books would get to play).
I’m not kidding when I say, “You should read this book.” And yeah, I’m talking to you, the red head.
I know, it’s not like I’m going out on a limb here. It won the Pulitzer. It won best book of 2002 from The Los Angeles Times, Chic...more

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