Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Middlesex: A Novel
Book Review: A Spectacular Read
Summary: 5 Stars
Middlesex
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Picador Publishing Company
Review by Gary Starks
Not many people know what life is like as a hermaphrodite, but Jeffrey Eugenides puts the reader in the front seat riding shotgun with Cal Stephanides. Middlesex is the brow raising story of Calliope/Cal and of how a family of secrets would change her/his life even before she/he is born.
From the very first lines of Middlesex, Cal, instantly lays out the format for his story without giving away the whole book. "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." In fact, this is such a strong beginning it made me fall in love with the book right away.
Cal follows the above statement with, "My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license records my name as Cal.", gives us an idea of where the author is going with his tale. You will find Cal's story of his rollercoaster life as a young girl going through puberty full of wonder and excitement as well as tragedy.
Once Cal has explained his birth, he takes us across the seas to the place where his yia yia and papu were born; on the slopes of Mount Olympus in a small village in Greece. Here, you will find Desdemona and Lefty Stephanides hoping to marry someone from the village, but their search and frustration will lead them to other adventures.
Travel through time from 1922 through 2001 as Calliope and Cal Stephanides. Travel as one of many fires on the slopes of Mount Olympus down the streets and through houses in a small village in Asia Minor. Travel the Silk Road. Travel across the seas as Desdemona and Lefty escape certain death and to come to America. Travel across the United States as young Cal tries to find himself. Travel the air ride in one Milton's many Catalacs and travel through generations of atrocities as a mutated gene on a fifth chromosome.
Cal tells us of his very unique experience first as a girl struggling through the pubescent and formative years. Waiting to become a lady, Calliope finds everyone else developing while she slowly changes in different ways than the other girls. The budding of breasts and the development of hair (in massive amounts on Calliope's head) set the other girls apart from her. "'Most spectacular of all, girls are becoming women. Not mentally or emotionally even, but physically... Only Calliope in the second row now is motionless... so that she is the only one who takes in the metamorphosis around her. "'Remember me?' she says, to nature. `I'm waiting. I'm still here.'" These beautifully written words are believable as that of a fourteen year old girl wanting to fit in with her classmates, especially in an all girls school where all you know is how your body is suppose to be changing. Then Calliope cuts her hair and her name and runs away to California to escape genital reconfiguration claiming "'I am a boy.'"
While reading Middlesex, I found this story about a hermaphrodite coming of age to be very enjoyable. The narrator takes you on a journey through time and explains each aspect of her/his life as it happens. I truly believe Middlesex will be Mr. Eugenides' next Pulitzer.
Book Review: A Truly Fantastic Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Everything you could possibly want to know about the book has already been said over and over in previous reviews. So I'll leave it as this - Middlesex is a great book.
The book is 500+ pages long, which at first seems like a daunting task. However, it's a quick reader. It's an extremely captivating and enthralling story. You won't want to put it down.
I don't like giving a lot of five-star reviews, but I really loved this book. I would highly recommend Middlesex to anyone who likes good, strange, quirky fiction.
Book Review: A Very Fine, "Great American Novel"
Summary: 5 Stars
The little Pulitzer Prize sticker one immediately notices on the cover of this book doesn't automatically guarantee that it'll be any good--there have been some dogs over the years--but in this case, it is absolutely justified. This is an ambitious, extraordinarily well-written hunk of a novel, and richly deserves every award it can get. It is narrated by Cal, a hermaphrodite, and the premise is that she, (and I will use this pronoun, because this is what she is for most of the book), has finally decided after many years to tell her story. Of course, the word "hermaphrodite" immediately sets off alarm bells, as any discerning reader knows that contemporary American fiction is loaded with oddball sexual practices, usually grotesquely and unrealistically portrayed.
Happily, that is not the case here, because Cal is . . . normal. Normal under the circumstances, that is, but normal nevertheless, as she acts in such a way that we would expect most people to act. Mr. Eugenides handles this expertly. To begin with, in her early life she is not even aware that she is different. When the doubts begin to creep in as adolescence approaches, she reacts as one would expect an adolescent to act: she pretends it doesn't exist. Finally, when confronted irredeemably with the truth, she reacts by . . . well, better not say too much, but her actions are certainly not atypical for an average 14 year-old.
In any event, she believes that to tell her story she must go back to the beginning in a search for the elusive gene that caused all of this. She starts with her Greek grandparents in Smyrna, Turkey, 1922, who themselves are possessors of a dark, dark secret. They are driven away by the invading Turks and must escape, first to Greece itself, then to New York, and finally to Detroit, Michigan, where they have a cousin. This is where Cal's parents are born, and where she is eventually born, in 1960.
Mr. Euginides has a superb sense of period, place, and culture. From the beautiful hills above Smyrna, to cosmopolitan Smyrna itself, to Ellis Island in huge New York, and finally to smoky, big-shouldered, factory-spewing Detroit, the scene is superbly evoked. He understands the times as well, and how people change with them. Immigrant Greeks in the twenties and thirties had a different world-view than their cautiously optimistic children of the forties and fifties, who in turn had a different world-view than their wild children of the sixties and seventies.
The characters presented against this broad backdrop are wonderfully presented. Lefty is the grandfather, a skinny guy with a pompadour who becomes a rum runner and then a speakeasy owner. Desdemona, the grandmother, has flowing hair and ancient superstitions. Milton, the horn-playing, wise-cracking, opinionated Dad, is equally angry with Nixon and with the black rioters who burned the city in 1967. All of the characters, large and small, are finely etched, and again, reflect the times in which they lived. They and their setting represent an accurate, comprehensive slice of one person's 20th century America, done in an entertaining, very readable way.
But it is when Cal begins to tell her own story that the novel really begins to shine. Poor, awkward Cal, flat-chested, too tall, and still pre-menstrual at 14 years of age: she desperately tries to fit in, and is not sure why she can't. She's confused and lonely but she nevertheless maintains a chin-up enthusiasm and has kind, eccentric parents who love her. Never is there a hint of self-pity or sentimentality in her tale; instead she is witty, intelligent, and often humorous. She is a sympathetic, hugely original character, and easily carries the narrative with her charm.
On top of everything else, Mr. Eugenides' use of the English language is magnificent; reminiscent, as other reviewers have pointed out, of Nabokov in many places. Cal's moment of agonizing self-discovery begins with an infatuation she has with a female classmate she refers to wistfully as the "obscure object." To her surprise and delight she finds that this beautiful all-American has become her best friend. From here her desires become more transparent, and on a bizarre, emotionally confused, dreamy night, they finally manifest themselves physically: " . . . my body, like a cathedral, broke out into ringing. The hunchback in the belfry had jumped and was swinging madly on the rope." How perfectly wrought this is, from the wise and bemused narrator later in life. And how emotionally powerful this is, causing as it does the conflict in the reader as to whether to giggle or to sob.
Shortly thereafter the transformation begins, and many more surprises and power punches are in store. This is a magnificent American novel, rich and sweeping and poignant and true. The novel at its best. The novel as a work of art.
Book Review: A Very Memorable Read
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved this book! I read it about a month ago and am still thinking about it. It was the kind of book that you develop a relationship with. I couldn't put it down, but I didn't want it to end either.
If you like novels about history, (world and family), sexuality, greek americans, or growing up in the seventies, you'll love this book. The characters are memorable and alive. It was so much more than a "book about a hermaphrodite". Read this when you're in the mood for a smart, all emcompassing story you won't want to end.
Book Review: A Year Later
Summary: 5 Stars
One year after reading Middlesex I can still say:
1)I remember it clearly.
2)It was so beautifully written.
3)The story was fascinating.
4)I have given or recommended it to many people.
5)It is one of my all-time favorites.
6)My mother (86 yrs. old) loved it, too.