Middlesex: A Novel (edit title)

• Rated 0 stars

“tried to read this for a book group. awful. just awful. maybe made it through 100 pages when i just couldn't take it anymore. just didn't care about anyone in the story or the story itself.”

• Rated 4 stars

“Riveting - From Lefty and Desdamona to Cali. The secrets that they kept are unimaginable. ”

• Rated 5 stars

““But maybe the Charm Bracelets understood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn’t waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. The only trust fund I have is this story, and unlike a prudent Wasp, I’m dipping into principal, spending it all.” ~ Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.

When I first finished reading Middlesex, I said, “The book is like nourishment, I kept drawing more and more from it, and everything about it is perfection”. I don’t deviate from that one iota. I had previously read The Virgin Suicides, which is a good book, but Middlesex is not a ‘good book’. It is a masterpiece. It is an amazingly well researched, thoroughly accurate, brilliantly written, wonderfully original marvel. Books like this is why I love reading. Books like this make me weep when I finish them, but I never want to let go of that wonder. There are very few books that I wish I had never read, so that I could go back and read them again and feel that new rush of emotion. This is one of them. I want everyone in the world to read this book. I want to meet Eugenides and thank him profusely for injecting this into the world.”

• Rated 0 stars

“ "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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• Rated 0 stars

“I have this on my shelf to read ”

• Rated 0 stars

“Excellent story, you can't put the book down.”

• Rated 5 stars

“I couldn't put this book down. The writing was so fluid and vivid that you felt that you were in the story, living with the Stephanides. The characters are believable and you, as the reader, get to know each character almost as if you were a close friend. I also enjoyed the history that was so well incorporated with the plot. I was uncertain that I would enjoy reading about the generations of the Stephanides and just wanted to read about Cal's, or Calliope's, life. But, I became enraptured with the Stephanides' past and it made me want to read more to see what happens with Cal. I loved how all of the events tied together smoothly.

I definitely recommend Middlesex and give praise to Eugenides, who executed the story brilliantly. ”

• Rated 4 stars

“What a different premise! Cal (Calliope) Stephanides is a hermaphrodite, but the book is really not so much about Cal as about the history of his immigrant family, told against a background of historical events. The flashbacks are a distraction to some readers (it is not MY favorite technique). Still, this is an extraordinary book and well worth reading. I kept reading passages out loud to people.”

• Rated 5 stars

“beautiful.”

• Rated 5 stars

“Middlesex is intriguing and creative. It's about genes and family histories and the effect of a certain recessive gene on the fifth chromosome of Calliope Stephanides. She/he is a hermaphrodite and Middlesex tells the wondrous story of his life.

From the 1922 burning of Smyrna to the Detroit race riots of 1967. From San Francisco in the '70's to Berlin in 2001. This story does a lot of time traveling as we follow the story of Calliope's incestuous grandparents to the modern day Calliope who becomes just plain Cal. There is a lot of family history here which makes for very interesting reading.

Middlesex is beautifully written as it invokes images of the life of three generations of a Greek family. I loved all the different settings in this novel. All the different places and times made Middlesex an exhilarating story with some very original characters. It's no wonder it won the Pulitzer. ”