Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1103 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-16
• Released on: 2003-09-16
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

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

From Publishers Weekly
As the Age of the Genome begins to dawn, we will, perhaps, expect our fictional protagonists to know as much about the chemical details of their ancestry as Victorian heroes knew about their estates. If so, Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides) is ahead of the game. His beautifully written novel begins: "Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, 'Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites.' " The "me" of that sentence, "Cal" Stephanides, narrates his story of sexual shifts with exemplary tact, beginning with his immigrant grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty. On board the ship taking them from war-torn Turkey to America, they married-but they were brother and sister. Eugenides spends the book's first half recreating, with a fine-grained density, the Detroit of the 1920s and '30s where the immigrants settled: Ford car factories and the tiny, incipient sect of Black Muslims. Then comes Cal's story, which is necessarily interwoven with his parents' upward social trajectory. Milton, his father, takes an insurance windfall and parlays it into a fast-food hotdog empire. Meanwhile, Tessie, his wife, gives birth to a son and then a daughter-or at least, what seems to be a female baby. Genetics meets medical incompetence meets history, and Callie is left to think of her "crocus" as simply unusually long-until she reaches the age of 14. Eugenides, like Rick Moody, has an extraordinary sensitivity to the mores of our leafier suburbs, and Cal's gender confusion is blended with the story of her first love, Milton's growing political resentments and the general shedding of ethnic habits. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this book is Eugenides's ability to feel his way into the girl, Callie, and the man, Cal. It's difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender. This is one determinedly literary novel that should also appeal to a large, general audience.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-From the opening paragraph, in which the narrator explains that he was "born twice," first as a baby girl in 1960, then as a teenage boy in 1974, readers are aware that Calliope Stephanides is a hermaphrodite. To explain his situation, Cal starts in 1922, when his grandparents came to America. In his role as the "prefetal narrator," he tells the love story of this couple, who are brother and sister; his parents are blood relatives as well. Then he tells his own story, which is that of a female child growing up in suburban Detroit with typical adolescent concerns. Callie, as he is known then, worries because she hasn't developed breasts or started menstruating; her facial hair is blamed on her ethnicity, and she and her mother go to get waxed together. She develops a passionate crush on her best girlfriend, "the Object," and consummates it in a manner both detached and steamy. Then an accident causes Callie to find out what she's been suspecting-she's not actually a girl. The story questions what it is that makes us who we are and concludes that one's inner essence stays the same, even in light of drastic outer changes. Mostly, the novel remains a universal narrative of a girl who's happy to grow up but hates having to leave her old self behind. Readers will love watching the narrator go from Callie to Cal, and witnessing all of the life experiences that get her there.
Jamie Watson, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

An exceptionally entertaining novel
This review refers to the Unabridged Audio CD version of the novel.

Middlesex is a captivating novel that runs the gamut of emotions -- from comedy to tragedy.

The narrator of this audio book was exceptional. The main characters are Greek and while I'm not sure if the narrator was Greek, he pulled off the Greek/American accent wonderfully.

This story is unique in that the main character describes the story of his life by going back 2 generations to his grandparents in Turkey. The first 1/3 of the book deals primarily with his grandparents and it is not until later in the book that the story of the main character begins to unfold.

The remaining 2/3 of the novel are set primarily in Detroit and having grown up in the Metropolitan Detroit area myself, I found the descriptions of the city's changes from the 1920s to 1970s compelling.

If you're looking for a recap or summary of the novel, I'm sure you can find it in other reviews. I prefer to remain somewhat in the dark when I pick up a new book, so what I will say is that you will definitely not be disappointed by this novel. Enjoy!

Read with an open mind - it's not what you think!
I was assigned to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides in my English Literature class this semester (spring 2008). I was rather apprehensive because I knew it was going to be about a controversial subject, or so I thought. My son had read it a few years ago and told me to read it with an open mind, so I did.
Of course, there were times when you had to keep your emotions on the surface and not think too deeply about certain situations, but on the whole I found it to be an informative and enlightening text. Believe it or not, I was not familiar with what a hermaphrodite is even though I am a 53 year old mother of three. (I am a non-traditional student.)
The narration was very creative and enjoyable to read. The history and experiences of the three generations of the Stephanides family was intriguing and interesting.
Reading about Callie's feelings as her life evolved from childhood, through her/his teens, and then into his adulthood gave me a new respect and compassion for individuals who have to deal with similar situations where they are not part of the mainstream where gender is concerned. As a person realizes that they are different, it is very painful and traumatizing for them to undergo the changes they have to in order to survive both emotionally and physically. As ignorant (meaning not properly educated) individuals, we tend to stereotype these people and we can be very cruel to them. What they really need is for us to try to understand and accept them. What if something like this would have happened to you or me? Is this something we could have changed? It certainly isn't a conscious choice that is being made in these people's lives. So read Middlesex with an open mind and enjoy the story. It is a good read and Callie will find a place in your heart!

A long Novel
This is a long novel, however it is not a charles Dickens novel where one can easily get lost in the sea of characters. I love this books, there is an incredible amount of historical detail, which at first seems such a bore to read, however it is incredibly interesting after the novel is read. from the battles or wars between turkey and Greece, to the incredible rich history of Detroit that I had no idea about, I only knew Detroit for its cars. But the author has weeved together an incredible story in part about immigrants and starting their lives again. And the other part of the story is about a young girl who tries to find her identity, which is common to all of us, however it is more dramatic for this young girls as it happens that she is a boy. There is so many elements to this novel, its quite fascinating, and what makes this novel a masterpiece to me is that I still think about the novel and the author in this unique story made this story so universal. For example, hemaphrodites, much of the stories i have read about hemaphrodites, which is little, has always been mythologized, something unreal, however this novel manages to make this hemaphrodite a human being. I love this book. I must admit, this book took me a while to read, however, it is worth it.