Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Middlesex: A Novel
Book Review: A little slow and a lot long, but a good story.
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed this book. It was very long with little EXCITING action, but it was a great journey. Middlesex offered insight and connection to a medical condition many might not understand. Cal is an endearing character, and the back history on the family is very fun to read.Book Review: A little too epic and off subject?
Summary: 2 Stars
Nearly 300 pages into the book and hardly met the main character. I could easily stop now, but all the 5 star reviews have me curious. Not a stay-up-all-nighter by a long shot. This is a well written novel, but I am almost at the "who cares" point. It really needs the central figure to hold it together. I keep asking "where is this going?" and it just keeps going along in true epic fashion. If you picked this up for enlightenment on the life of a hermaphrodite, you have a long read before you get into his(her) story.Book Review: A lot of hype, but ok
Summary: 3 Stars
I must be honest here. If it was not for two 5-hour long bus rides I probably would not have made it past the first chapter. This book covers some interesting topics but does it in the most longwinded and boring writing style imaginable.
The author does a good job of imitating how a 13 year old girl would write because that is exactly how this book reads.
I am not going to go into any of the gender issues raised in this book. You either agree strongly with these perspectives or don't buy into it / couldn't care less. THe bootom line on all of this is there are good reasons why relatives should not have children together.
The one thing that was really annoying throughout all of this was how the main character referred to her brother as Chapter 11 and never mentions his name. It was at the end that I realized this referred to Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. The brother earned this nickname by ruining the family business. I must have missed how she gave herself a nickname of DOA or something along that sort for facilitating her father's death.
This is not all that great of a book but it does cover a lot of interesting topics and periods in history from a different perspective. The author goes out of his way to write in an unnatural writing style and I think he goes a little overboard at times.
Book Review: A major disappointment
Summary: 2 Stars
This novel has a wonderful narrative voice, fluent and engaging and capacious, able to swing from family to history to science, coining some excellent metaphors along the way. But nothing happens. Or more acccurately, none of the things that happen matter. A city is destroyed, an incestuous couple fall out of love, a father dies in a slapstick car chase, and none of it sticks, none of it hurts. This is a smooth, easy, painless epic. A novel over five hundred pages long needs to break your heart a couple of times. The one complaint I'd heard was that the Greek family sections were great but the Cal/Calpurnia stuff never took off. For me, however, the Greek family didn't take off either. Eugenides writes very well and he had a great idea for a novel here but some kind of emotional/dramatic disconnect in his art has resulted in a weightless cartoon.Book Review: A must read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of those books that you plunge into and don't come up for air until you finish it. Epic in a way, and yet much more readable than that word usually implies. I couldn't put it down---the characters just pull you along, and you have to know what happens to each one next. Highly recommended.