Rating: 
Summary: Jeffrey Eugenides proves that he is no fluke
Review: When Jeffrey Eugenides dazzled us with his first novel 'The Virgin Suicides' in 1993, we didn't know what expect next. Would he be able to produce another novel as lyrical and dreamy as his debut? Or was he another fluke, a one-book wirter?It took almost ten years, but it was worth waiting. His follow up is as good as 'Virgins', if not even better. 'Middlesex' is many things but an ordinary story. At first level it is the story of a hermaphrodite discovering his/her body and trying to cope with it. The novel is also a vast panorama of the story of the XX Century, showing events such as the genocide in Greece, the first days of Ford Motors, the Prohibition era and the 1967 race riots --not forgetting to mention life in the pos-wall Berlin. History epic aside, 'Middlesex' is also a personal journey of a human being trying to figure out what he is doing in the world, what life means, where we are being led to. Callie --and Cal later on-- has many questions, and no answers, and she is not even aware where to find them. She knows she is different, but she doesn't know that extension of that. The first person narrative brings power to the novel. Callie's voice is beautiful and said at the same time. Her family --with no surprise-- is what brings her together. Even when she is not with them. At a certain point, one must run away from his/her family in order to understand his/her origins. And this is exactly what happens to Callie/Cal. In a level this book is a coming-of-age tale --a very very different one, but still a novel about becoming an adult, and leaving behind all you used to believe as a child. Somehow, this is an extension to what he worked with in 'Virgin'. We will never forget that dialogue between a shrink and one of the girls, when he asks why she tried to kill herself, she didn't even know how hard life can be. And her smart answer is that he had never been a 13 year-old girl. Eugenides make no concessions. The novel has a sad tone --despite some funny parts. The lesson we learn is 'life is no easy'. And we have to struggle to survive. Not many writers have the courage to write like that. With 'Middlesex' he proves he is not a fluke, that 'The Virgin Suicides' is indeed a work of genius and that his Pulitzer is more than deserved.
Rating: 
Summary: Literary Merit Vs. Enjoyment
Review: Did I enjoy this book? Honestly, not that much. Personally I felt that the book was slow and sex oriented and packed full of characters who were constantly doing things that aggravated me, but t did have some very significant ideas. I happen to dislike this kind of novel, but I would suggest reading it anyway because of the universal topics about the differences between the sexes and the hardships that every teenager, boy, girl, or both at the same time, must face. Even though the frequent sex scenes made me a bit queasy and I found myself coming to hate the seemingly stupid decisions of the characters I feel that they are a very accurate interpretation of the average person set in an un-average situation such as being faced with the fact that you are a hermaphrodite. I believe that this book has acquired so many accolades because of the fact that it's characters are normal people who make stupid decisions, and constant mistakes. Even though it pains me to say so, they are realistic and accurately express the views and feelings of the mainstream. No matter that I hated this book, it still has merit and should be read by all, if not necessarily for pleasure but for the experience and the knowledge about the hearts of humans that you will gain through the reading.
Rating: 
Summary: My Big Fat Greek Book
Review: Don't let the length and 'epic' style narration fool you: the Stephanides family is uninteresting. Eugenides attempts a Philip Roth/Saul Bellow-ish 'american novel', where social-economic, geo-political commentaries are made. The problem is Eugenides re-spits out verbatim what every intelligent writer has been hashing out since the 70's. The form is getting tired. War is bad, okay. Racism is bad, okay. Postmodern fragmentation has left us all exiled and feeling 'special'. Cookie cutter suburbia is boring and intolerant, okay. Yes, yes, we know. It's time to call those self satified people at the National Book Award and the Pulitzer- we got yet another novel that woes the critics with its use of italics and sensitive moments. To concede, there's nothing inherently wrong with this book- it's a well-hearted benign story that somebody wanted to write. And of course, this is a free country and we can read and give awards to any book we want. I'm simply asserting my public forum right to say this: As somebody who loves to read, and has read many great books, I found this book extremely predictable, passive, and too self-aware of its own importance.
Rating:
Summary: A Resounding Novel
Review: When I first heard about Middlesex on NPR, I was intrigued. Yet, like many intriguing things, it soon became buried beneath the daily worries of making lunches, writing thank-you cards, and research papers. It was only last month that, with the help of my English teacher's open reading assignment, I remembered Middlesex. Thank God I did! Middlesex is, simply, a beautiful book. The story itself is fascinating: a girl who discovers as a teenager that she is a hermaphrodite and chooses to become a man. The detail is extraordinary - silkworms appear throughout the novel as a leading and touching symbol. The background is amazing: in fact, much of the first half of the book concerns Cal/Callie's parents and grandparents. As Cal himself says, "I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival." It is only in the second half that Cal him/herself comes into a major role. Yet, throughout the book, Cal is definitely the narrator, from his grandparents' flight from Turkey to his own dates with Julie in modern post-September 11 Berlin. Yet, what makes Middlesex unique is Jeffrey Eugenides' writing. He treats a complicated subject with a finesse and sheer beauty which is rarely encountered. "Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome! Sing how it bloomed two and a half centuries ago on the slopes of Mount Olymps, while the goats bleated and the olives dropped...how it blew like a seed across the sea to America, where it drifted through our industrial rains until it fell to earth in the fertile soil of my mother's own midwestern womb. Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too." Seamlessly, he alternates between lyrical philosophical passages and conversations between two teenage girls. Past and present and future are all fluid and one doesn't even notice it until afterwards. Well, I said I read Middlesex for my English class and so I did. Two people read the novel with me. One, like me, fell totally in love with it. The other, who loves zombie movies and guts and gore, hated it. His main complaint was that there was too much of a focus on sex. Yet, although that is on the surface the subject of the book, it's really not at all. It's about a person's search for their own identity. The characters are all essentially human - to not empathize with them would take a skill I simply lack. Callie is touching and absorbing - her search to find herself and define who she is and why she's here, is one which confronts everybody. "Was it love or reproduction? Chance or destiny?" Callie, like all of us, struggles to explain the meaning of her existence. For those of you who adore "Night of the Living Dead" and "2 Fast 2 Furious" more than life itself, Middlesex is not for you. But...on second thought, I take it back. Read it anyway. You'll like it or not, but I'll bet you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, engaging character and good story
Review: I'm a sucker for a good story, and if it's a good story with a character that draws me in, I'm hooked. Middlesex did that for me. This is the first by Eugenides that I've read, although I plan to pick up Virgin Suicides eventually. The only part I wasn't too crazy about was the "present day" plot, the relationship between the protagonist and the woman he meets in Germany. Not that there was anything really really wrong with it, it just didn't ring true for me ... I was convinced of everything else in the novel except that. Still, a good read of the stuff that's come out in past couple years. I recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I've read this year
Review: I finished this book in record time and now I wish I had savored it a little more. This is not just the story of hermaphrodite Cal Stephanides but also the history of his family. The book goes back to Greece where his grandparents are forced by war to emigrate and brings us through their lives and their children's lives to the birth and strange life of Cal. Anyone born in the Detroit area should read this purely for the history, but I recommend it to everyone as the best book I've read this year.
Rating:
Summary: Middlesex was Magnificent!!
Review: My friends and I picked this book for an extra credit assignment for my English class. The book had won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize and we decided that the book was "about a hermaphrodite, but not really because it's a Pulitzer Prize winning book and those books are never REALLY about what they're about." The book was really an enjoyable read. If the stirring story of three generations of Greek-Americans, a teenage hermaphrodite, and an "interesting adolescence" don't suck you in immediately (Have you no soul!!!?) then Eugenides crafting of the novel certainly will. He is a hermaphroditic as well; a classical and contemporary novelist all in one. He utilizes an amazing modern prose style of narration as well as a great grasp of conversational dialogue. It's a long novel, but it never gets to the point of seeming inpenetrable and "dense". If the story of the hermaphrodite is the main attraction, be forewarned; she isn't born until halfway through the novel, but she still narrates the whole novel. The book is an experience; it provides the chance to live through possibly this century's most provacative, insightful and imaginative narrator ever.
Rating:
Summary: Historical and topical both
Review: It is the story of a girl who finds out when she's 14 that due to a genetic defect, she is actually a guy. It also follows the story of his parents and grandparents, tracing the recent history of the genetic mutation to show how he ended up the way he did.
The book is set in the 1920s to the present, follows the grandparents emigration to America from Grece and their struggles to establish themselves. It covers the parents and Cal growing up in the 1960s and 70s in Detroit and Grosse Pointe, to the present day Cal, working for the US state department in Germany.
I found it an engaging read, but I really like historic-snapshot thingies. So if you don't, you might not.
Rating:
Summary: A complete waste of time
Review: The only interesting thing about this book is the praise it received. The writing is tedious and the characters are annoyingly predictable. I have 6 pages left and I could care less if I finish it. Regrets? That I paid full price and wasted precious time being seduced by jacket praise and awards mention. If you must see for yourself, borrow a copy.
Rating: 
Summary: almost good
Review: At times a good story well told. The middle section is quite gripping but the books suffers from forrest-gumpism, tired listing in passages, charicaturish places and people, and postmodernist interjections that feel like explanatory outbursts someone might offer at a book group discussing this novel. Geez, don't you trust us the reader to figure anyting out. Also his chops just aren't that great.
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