Middlesex: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  842 reviews
Sales Rank: 6007
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 0312422156
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312422158
ASIN: 0312422156
Publication Date: September 16, 2002
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Amazon.com
"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
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."So begins 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 l967, 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. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.
Download Description
Spanning across eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence - Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 837 more reviews...
 great book August 28, 2008
i do not like oprah. but she reccommended this book and i said what the hell. it is a great read. funny, touching and totally engrossing. dont listen to what oprah says read it yourself
Eloquent writing August 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great read. Gave a new perspective on a "hidden" human issue that society prefers to ignore.
Excellent August 22, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is wonderfully written. There's so much into it that you will never want to skim through any paragraph!
 Oversimplifying to the point of insult + boring = WHY August 17, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
First Eugenides seems to have stolen the life stories of quite a few actual "intersex" people (or choose your term). Then he manages to insult the very people whose life stories he has swiped by offering the most grotesque happy Hollywood ending of all time. It's magic! He read his file and escaped genital mutilation! A miracle that, by the way, freed Eugenides from having to do anything more than cobble together the life stories of a few actual intersex people, tack on loads of meaningless and preposterously dull family history that, ultimately, does not move forward the plot, the themes, or the character development, and then tie it all up with a bow.
In real life, intersex individuals born in the 20th century were, as a matter of routine, genitally mutilated and left without sensation or without appropriate genitalia for the gender with which they ultimately identified. Many of these people lived terrible lives that ended badly---in suicide and despair. At best, they lived heroic lives of overcoming the necessity of keeping secret a fundamental truth about themselves.
These themes deserve to be explored. These themes are interesting and brave. Mining the juicy, prurient bits of the life stories of people who suffered through their lives is nothing but cowardice. Craven opportunism. Exploitation.
On top of all that, stylistically the book was just dull. I agree with other posters in that this author is striving to be a Roth and falls well short of the mark. Apparently Pulitzer and Oprah don't care about this, and I've also heard that the intersex community (if there is such a thing) are pleased with the book. Or, at least those that Oprah invited onto her show.
Might as well read it, though. Then you can [...] about it at parties, just like me!
AMAZING. August 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
AMAZING. This pulitzer-prize winning novel follows 3 generations of a Greek/Greek American family. The narrator is Callie/Cal, amazing, heartbreaking, super funny storyteller and hermaphrodite. A must for anyone who appreciates fantastic comic timing, loads of literary allusions, a moving narrative, and/or thinking about the "reliability" of the narrator as he reports/constructs the lives of his grandparents, parents and himself. A MUST-READ!!!
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