Middlesex: A Novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeffrey EugenidesEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-04
ISBN: 0374199698
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Book Reviews of Middlesex: A Novel
Book Review: 20th Century Metamorphosis
Summary: 5 Stars
Cal, the 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodite, is the narrator of this generation-spanning tale, beginning in small Greek villages plagued by Turkish atrocities in the '20s, the desperate escape to America and the Detroit of the '30s and '40s and off to the suburbs and prosperity during the '50s and '60s. It is filled with colorful characters who can compete with a first-person narrator who lived as a girl until puberty revealed she was not. It begins with Desdemona, a silk-worker, and her brother Lefty, living in their tiny village where the few inhabitants apparently carry the rare genetic abnormality that will come to fruition in their grandchild, Cal. We follow the path of the family, and Cal's genes, through warfare and death and chance meetings and lives saved, over to Ellis Island. And then to Detroit in the days of the founding of Ford and other industrial giants.
The story is one of traveling to the New World and the revelations of science, even while the old mysteries of sexuality and identity remain. It's the tale of immigration and assimilation, of little Old World communities to little urban communities and the diaspora to the suburbs, and of making ones way upward and outward, achieving the American Dream. And of the heartaches and difficulties and struggles along the way. Of race and religion. Of human beings being human, no matter what their roots or genes or politics.
The characters are amazingly sympathetic, whether they be gangsters or con-men or involved in incest. Whether in seemingly settled suburbia, or the Tenderloin of San Francisco during the free-sex 60's and 70's, the characters and their lives are compelling, making for a fascinating and readable book.
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