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Middlesex: A Novel
by: Jeffrey Eugenides

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Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: September 16, 2002
Publisher: Picador
Studio: Picador
Sales Rank: 291564

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Editorial Review:

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.

Amazon.com Review:
"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

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- amazing!
this book is just amazing in creativity and style. Story of many generations and untold family secrets.

Rating:

- Epic and Fabulous!
I couldn't put this book down...it's been a while since I've read such an epic and interesting novel. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:

- Just OK
This book was just OK, felt sort of "put on" at times, but it was a nice quick read. Recommended for light reading material in between denser books.

Rating:

- A Hellenistic Forrest Gump
In case people think the comparison is meant as a compliment, it's not. This book had the same annoying way of coming up with coincidences that put people in the middle of "supposedly" historical occurrences. Just as I couldn't finish watching the movie, I couldn't finish reading this book. The characters and events were bland, and the magical realism didn't work.

I couldn't understand why this book is so popular until I started reading the reviews and found out that it's an Oprah's Book Club selection. The copy I have doesn't have her logo. The logo is for me is an automatic indication that a book is going to be cheesy and poorly written.

If you want to read excellent Greek tragedies about an incestuous relationship and its result, I suggest reading "Oedipus" ... Read More

Rating:

- DIsappointing
I purchased the book because of the Big O stamp of approval and found myself struggling to get through it.The history was somewhat interesting but the characters never seemed real to me, or maybe not compelling. I left it at the vacation rental, maybe someone else will enjoy it but I wont takes Oprah's recommendations so seriously now.

Books : Middlesex: A Novel