Middlesex

Rating:
Summary: A terrific novel!
Review: From the first sentence of Jeffrey Eugenides' MIDDLESEX, I was hooked by this complicated tale of a young girl who grows into a man. The story of Cal Stephanides begins generations before his birth, in a small Greek village, when his grandparents succumb to incestuous desires. Immigration to the United States keeps Desdemona and Lefty's secret intact - until their grandchild Cal reaches puberty. Told with both humor and earnestness, the story grows more engaging with every page.

The brilliance of this book emerges not from the superficial story of a hermaphrodite but from the context - historical, scientific, psychological, political, geographical - of Cal's birth and subsequent rebirth. MIDDLESEX is about much more than gender confusion. Cal's mixed gender can be taken as a metaphor for the experience of first- and second-generations born of immigrants.

While the context of this story provides the substance, the characters provide the vibrancy. Cal emerges as a reliable and likeable narrator. He is sensible, good-humored, and intelligent. The spectrum of his experiences provides a smooth transition between childhood and adult, enabling the reader to embrace the character as both male and female. Cal's family is affectionately portrayed, even with their failings. (Cal's brother, Chapter Eleven, annoyed me with his name, a running gag, but even he ended up a full-blooded character by the end.)

Eugenides has written an expansive, compelling book. Despite its length of over 500 pages, the novel is not a slow read - unless the reader wants it to be, to make it last. Accessible, intelligent, well-paced and plotted, it should appeal to a wide range of readers.

I can't recommend this novel highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: very good
Review: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is the story of an intersexed individual who is raised as a girl, becomes aware of hir condition as a teenager, and begins living as a male. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I don't think it's a Great Work of Literature, but any time I read a 530 page book in just under a week, you know it's engrossing if nothing else. Eugenides did a great job of inhabiting his narrator, which is rather a feat, considering the narrator's unusual circumstances. While reading it, I was thinking that it was definitely one of the best books that I'd read in quite a while, until I remembered the fact that I had recently read Everything Is Illuminated. Middlesex was neither as intellectually nor emotionally stimulating as that book, but was certainly worth reading nonetheless. I was impressed that Eugenides was able to create a story that was so thoroughly convincing about topic that is quite outside of most people's experience. In fact, he created three very convincing stories, if you consider not just Cal's own story, but that of hir parents and grandparents as well. Yes, all in all a very good book. It makes me quite interested in reading The Virgin Suicides as well.

Rating:
Summary: A feat of imaginative empathy
Review: One of the challenges faced by writers is that of making old stories seem new and strange again, and to make ordinary, universal experience seem extraordinary and particular. Jeffrey Eugendies' "Middlesex" is a perfect example of this: superficially, it is the unusual, quirky tale of a hermaphrodite, and yet it captures and illuminates the commonplace trails of growing up and sexual awakening with as much tenderness, accuracy and originality as you'll find in any contemporary coming-of-age novel.

This might sound irrelevant, but I came away from this book not so much admiring Jeffrey Eugenides as liking him. "The Virgin Suicides" was a lovely, sad book, but this is far more ambitious - it's a hubristic idea that could have dissolved into a shallow vehicle for cleverness in another writer's hands, and it's a credit to Eugenides' warmth and charm that this doesn't. Eugenides is more interested in character and story than in the nature/nurture question the book inevitably raises; on this, he takes a rather safe middle ground, opting for the free will and self-determination argument. While this makes the book a little less interesting in terms of ideas, it makes it a better novel.
Eugendies' greatest assets are his offbeat altruism, his generosity, his humour, and his striking imagination. He knows how to entertain a reader, and he takes care of you throughout this sizeable read, confident that he's tapping a rich vein not only with Callie's tale of gender but with the background story of a Greek family across generations and recent American history captured via the prism of Detroit. But it is with Callie's early adolescence that this book really shines, especially in Eugenides' descriptions of her love affair with the Object - here is Eugenides' best prose, fertile, supple and evocative, clearly fired by its subject, and remarkably androgynous. While the book sags in certain parts, and occasionally falters in its own high-wire act (I found it sometimes a bit hard to picture Callie the Man after Callie the adolescent girl was so real; but then, that's forgivable, considering the enormous difficulty of such an undertaking), it's these passages that illuminate just what a feat of imaginative empathy Eugendies has achieved with "Middlesex." I'd recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: A bit of Greek to me
Review: There were lots of interesting moments but nothing much deep nor writing style very clever to keep me involved. Plus I think the author took a couple of impossible short cuts. Perhaps my opinion is tainted by dissapointment with an event that we never get to see to its fruition--the hero's first full-blossomed romantic relationship. To me it was good, basic reading but nothing special.

Rating:
Summary: So good on so many levels. Read it!
Review: This book was so much better than I expected it to be. I'll admit, I didn't read "The Virgin Suicides," but I saw the movie, and found it pretentious, so I translated this trait onto the author, Jeffrey Eugenides. I owe him an apology for jumping to that conclusion. This book is accessible, funny, smart, sad...it's just a great, great novel, and a fabulously entertaining read.

From page one I could not put this book down. I won't give away any of the plotline, but this is the story of a hermaprodite and the disturbing (but equal parts touching and human)family history that made her the way she is. Eugenides begins the story with Calliope, our hermaphroditic narrator, tracing a mutant gene back two generations to the Stephanides, a Greek family, emigrating from Turkey to escape the Turks. The family moves to Detroit, Michigan, and starts a new life. They raise a family, live through the race riots, and join the white flight to Grosse Pointe. It is their that second generation Greek-Americans Calliope and Chapter Eleven grow up.

Like the genetic mutation that haunts Calliope, Greece follows the family and story to America. It is a promise to the Greek Church that saves Milton in World War II; it is a Greek-named hot dog that saves the Stephanides family; it is the fires of the Turkish invasion that replays itself in the Detroit race riots; and it is a Greek myth that Calliope's life parallels. The reader is struck by the simplicity of the story-telling, and at the same time the complexity of the story. Eugenides is truly a marvel.

Calliope is the best narrator I can think of in recent American literature. Vernon Little ("Vernon God Little") pales in comparison. Calliope is human, empathetic, hilarious, and brilliant, making this book a whirlwind of all these different characteristics. I laughed out loud several times, and yet when Calliope discovers that she is not truly a girl, it is one of the most touching and heart-rending passages I have read in years. I read that page three times, and was moved every single time.

I hope that this conveys just how excellent this book is. I only wish I had read it sooner. I give it the highest recommendation.