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In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all. The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia--back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.… (more)
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Cal, born Callipe, tells his story: he seemed to be a girl when he was born, and was raised as such, then turned out at puberty to be a man whose sexual organs did not develop normally.
One of the main characteristic of this book is that the
The other thing I really liked is that a lot of details are given about Cal's life and his family's. This places him in a normal context, and in the end places a strong stress on the fact that he is a normal human being rather than on what makes him different, even if his particular nature of course plays a big role in the story.
All in all, this is a very well written and captivating book, which succeeds in being moving without being excessively emotive.
I might never have changed my mind about Middlesex if it hadn't been recommended by Abigail Nussbaum at Asking the Wrong Questions. Even with her brief review, and even knowing that the title referred to a boy raised as a girl and not the county in England, I didn't know what to expect. I vaguely guessed it was something very British, with tea and nannies. I could not have been more wrong, and was completely blown away.
Set mostly in Detroit in the '60s and '70s, Middlesex ranges fluidly backward to Turkey in the '20s to Berlin in the present to tell the story of Calliope Helen Stephanides, a biological male raised and treated as a female. With riffs on genetics, history, politics, growing up ethnic in a WASPy world, family, race, the suburbs, and Cadillacs, this is a funny, tragic, eloquent book, with many memorable passages and images.
Part of the fun for me is that Cal is almost exactly my own age. He experienced many of the things I experienced growing up. Like me, he lived through the race riots of the '60s (way more up close and personal than I did, however); his teenage medicine cabinet is filled with Psst instant shampoo and Love deodorant; schoolgirls use Flair pens. (The minorest of quibbles: noone drank bottled water in 1973.) One thing he doesn't really talk about much is Callie's clothes. Did Callie the girl, like me and so many girls our age, fight with her mother about wearing jeans instead of skirts? Would she have experienced them as liberation or as another threat to her precarious gender identity, as with her refusal to cut her hair?
Another gripping, not so fun, aspect of the book is Callie's eventual diagnosis as a hermaphrodite. I think a lot of people can identify with Cal's horror at the realization that, beyond the normal insecurities of adolescence, there really is something different about him. And that what's more, his parents, who supposedly know him the best and love him the most, think he is fundamentally flawed, wrong, broken, in need of fixing. For me, this resonated very deeply with my experience of growing up fat.
In some ways, the book reminded me strongly of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose in the way Cal reconstructs the lives of his grandparents in an effort to understand and cope with his own situation. Like Lyman Ward, Cal must fully accept his own difference before he can let others in and accept love. I only wish this part of the story -- Cal's final achievement of intimacy with a woman after 30 years of loneliness -- had been more deeply explored.
Edited to add: I may have been late on the Middlesex bandwagon, but at least I beat Oprah!
It is easy to see why this book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003. At once a sweeping rollicking comic
The book mixes literary styles, too. It starts out almost like a fairy tale—a tragicomic Greek epic—with chorus, no less! Much of the next part of the novel is written in a 19th-century style. Finally, the novel transforms into a modern psychological coming-of-age tale. As the literary style transforms over the course of the novel, we progress from the stories of Cal/Callie’s Greek ancestors through to the present day. Along the way, we are treated to a courageous Greek-American immigrant family saga as well as the story of Detroit from the Prohibition through to the present day. The story of Detroit is so vividly told that the city almost becomes a third character. In particular, we are brought into the alien worlds of early Ford assembly-line factory work, bootlegging prohibition gin-running and speakeasies, the birth of the Nation of Islam, the 1967 race riots, the rise of franchising wealth, and white flight to rich suburbs including sending children to private schools to avoid racial desegregation. All is so vividly recreated that the reader is transported.
At the heart of the novel is, of course, poor confused sweet child Callie/Cal. The story of her/his gradual awakening to sexual awareness, self-acceptance, and identity is profoundly touching, tastfully rendered, and ultimately very believable.
I loved this book. I did not want it to end; even after almost 600 pages, I wanted more.
"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
At 41, Cal is a narrator with the perspective needed to share an epic story, beginning with his grandparents who came from Greece to Detroit, Michigan, with a closely-guarded secret. The first half of the book is their story, the story of their son Milton and his wife Tessie, and the story of the immigrant experience in Detroit. It is both sweeping and personal, as any epic story should be. But it is when Calliope is born, joining her older brother (referred to only as Chapter Eleven), that the story becomes intimate, pulling us into the identity struggles that Calliope must negotiate throughout her childhood and adolescence.
I loved this book. It has the feel of some of John Irving's best novels - sweeping, yet intimate (and as a huge Irving fan, that is high praise from me). Calliope is an interesting narrator. Although she tells the story with the perspective of an adult, she is able to bring us into her adolescent mind as she deals with issues of growing up that are at once, similar to those of all great coming-of-age stories, yet completely unique to her experience. She brings us into a family that is loving and warm, but flawed. Their stories are quirky, filled with unusual circumstances, yet wholly believable.
The two halves of this book - before and after Calliope's birth - are not entirely cohesive. She tells the story of her grandparents and parents with some distance. It is a story with details that are specific to them, but with themes that underlie the experiences of many. Calliope's story, on the other hand, is less common, harder to identify with on the surface. This makes it all the more surprising that Eugenides can bring the reader to empathize with this part of the story as much as with the first, more universal part. After escaping from busy daily life into the hands of an experienced storyteller every night for the last week or so, I was sorry to see this book end.
Eugenides is a wonderful writer, and he
Because half of the book is dedicated to Callie's lineage, I feel his/her character lacks development, which is a huge shame. For me, Callie had the potential to be one of the most interesting characters in modern American literature. Instead, the character falls flat - just like the entire novel.
Middlesex is a Pulitzer prize winner and a recent selection for the Oprah Book Club. Obviously, many people enjoyed this novel. I am sorry that I am not one of them. However, I am more sorry that I wasted a week of my life finishing a book that I now call Middlesucks.
Strangely, in the tale of a hermaphrodite I didn't find anything remotely freakish, but humanely universal, as if by having this protagonist of an ambiguous gender, Eugenides was able to embrace and bridge both (all?) genders. It's an ambitious work, taking in about 80 years from his Greek immigrant grandparents roots in Turkey, to his parents and childhood in Detroit, to his coming of age on the road from New York City to San Francisco and his current life at a diplomatic posting in Germany. It takes in massacres in Turkey, Ellis Island, the development of America's car culture, Prohibition with it's Speakeasies and bootlegging, The Great Depression, World War II, The Nation of Islam, Detroit race riots and Black/White relations, the sexual revolution, politics, religion--there doesn't seem anything missed, and yet nothing that feels rambling or contrived or caricatured.
The voice is miraculous. Technically it's a first person narrative, but it breaks the bonds of that point of view into an expansive omniscience in telling its story of three generations: Book One dealing with his grandparents in Turkey and their immigration to Detroit; Book Two with the story of his grandparents and parents in Detroit before his birth; Book Three with his childhood and early adolescence; Book Four with his crisis of identity when doctors discover he's not the girl he was raised to be. Even in those two parts of the book during his own lifetime, the narration has that expansive, feel of third person omniscience, but with the intimacy of the first person voice.
Eugenides makes me feel for his characters. I ached for Callie--and Cal--both. I worried for him. I hoped for him. I was propelled through the 500 pages not wanting to skip one paragraph and ended it sorry it was over and wanting to read this again sometime--and Eugenides other novel.
It's a beautifully written book, with words used as skillfully as grapes in a master vinter's care, the result being a warming, richly flavored, intoxicating read. I laughed out loud, cried once in a while, and gasped in shock more than a couple times.
I thought the story ended a bit abruptly and almost anti-climatically, but if it had ended with any more drama, it most likely would've felt contrived.
This excellent read is well worthy of The Pulitzer, and if I normally read this kind of realism, I would give it five stars, but because I'm ranking it here for my own purposes among books in my preferred genres of impossible worlds and fantastic tales I must rank it lower. Don't get me wrong though, this book is top notch and will not disappoint, especially if you prefer richly spun stories that take place in our own familiar world.
The writing in this book is excellent. Eugenides has a very fluid style full of subtle allusions and echoes of Greek poets. All of the science and gender research in it is very correct, too. The protagonist's interactions with a particular gender researcher are modeled on an actual case in the gender literature - gender researchers always get very excited when a case shows up that sheds light on the nature vs. nurture debate: the protagonist here (and the real person he's based on) was one such case, being genetically male, but raised as female until puberty. In the famous case the researcher, named John Money if you're interested, believed that the subject proved that nurture (the gender of raising) was the determining factor, claiming that the subject was completely female. Over time, though, the story unraveled and it turned out that aspects of the subject had been concealed, and the subject eventually switched their gender identity to living as a man. The fictionalized version in Middlesex does a very good job exploring all the factors going into this, and is accurate to the real story, as far as I know it.
To summarize, then, Middlesex is a wonderfully written exploration of gender and identity. It is also a great, accurate introduction to most of the common themes you'd encounter in a psychology of gender class. In addition, it's a great story and a compelling family drama. You should read it.
The book is broken up into four very distinct parts and this is what makes it hardest to explain or define. To sum up, it could be called a sprawling Greek-American family's epic that segues in the second half into a unique coming-of-age story for a third generation child. What starts out as an immigration story becomes something completely different.
The easiest way for me to explain my feelings about this book is separate it into generations. The story of Lefty and Desdemona's flight from Turkey, clandestine marriage, and beginning a life in America enthralled me. I particularly thought Desdemona's feelings, reactions, and changes were realistic and humorous. Her neuroses played out similarly to my own grandmother's making it easy to imagine her. Lefty was also a well-drawn dimensional character. While he could have easily been flat and boring, his details made him very lifelike.
The second generation lost this a bit. Milton, while an interesting idea, seemed too unbalanced to be real, but was a good foil for Tessie's similarly unlikely character. Milton's personality was too strong too often, while Tessie's simpering, depression bored me. Their teenage selves did not match their grown selves well and the change over was too quick to allow me a chance to adjust. I liked Tessie during her adolescence, but she too quickly disappeared and became her annoying adult version.
Finally, the third generation of Cal and Chapter Eleven once again brought me into the story. I think they need to be looked at together, because while the story is mainly Cal's, Chapter Eleven plays his own part. I liked in particular Chapter Eleven's metamorphosis while at college as it was similar to those I've seen in many of those in my own generation. College is partially about throwing off the box you've been defined by for the past 18 years and partially about finding out where you actually fit. Calliope, later Cal, goes through a similar process, but at an earlier age.
Now to discuss the major plot point of the second half of the book: I saw Calliope's sexual awakening and later gender identity reversal as symbolic (but much more drastic) of the changes all kids go through during adolescence. While the scientific aspects of his case were interesting to read and added a flair of drama not usually present in coming-of-age books, I found the similarities to a normal pubescent teen more striking than the dissimilarities. I think if you read this with the idea that the author is aiming at making grand statements about gender roles in modern life, than you'll be disappointed. If you read it as a narrative about a girl who doesn't know who or what she is, then it becomes an impressive piece of literature.
In all, I really believe you can get out of this book what you want. There will be those who are not impressed with it or are disgusted with the story or will be disappointed that it's not a diatribe against the modern idea of gender. I went into this book knowing a minimal amount about the plot and having no expectations and was very happy with it. I think the author has done an admirable job at following up his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, with another equally well-written novel about a family and coming-of-age while at the same time bringing light to a topic many people know little about. If there is anyone besides me who hasn't read it, I highly recommend it! (Sometimes it seems like I'm the only one who hasn't!)
I was wrong on both counts. I loved this book, and I neglected all sorts of important tasks while I devoured it in less than 48 hours.
Right from this stark and startling opening sentence, this remarkable book surprises and moves the reader. It is the story of Greek-American Cal Stephanides, and of his family and genetic heritage and the circumstances which mean that he spends his early years as a little girl.
It is an immensely powerful story, thought-provoking and it is beautifully told. I rather wished that we'd heard a little more of how Callie/Cal the subject became Cal the narrator, but on the other hand there is something very satisfying about the way that the book ends with a new beginning.
The various strands of the story are interwoven in a way which engages interest and moves the narrative along in a lively manner. The historical and regional detail and atmosphere are beautiful, and the characters are very believable and human.
Very strongly recommended.
Narrator and protagonist Cal Stephanides (initially called "Callie") is a hermaphrodite man of Greek descent with a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which causes him to have certain feminine traits. The first half of the novel is about Cal's family, and depicts his grandparents' migration from Smyrna, a city in Asia Minor, to the United States in 1922. It then follows their assimilation into American society. The latter half of the novel, set in the late 20th century, focuses on Cal's experiences in his hometown Detroit, Michigan, and his escape to San Francisco where he comes to terms with his modified gender identity. Cal Stephanides is a fascinating character, that and the fine writing style of Jeffrey Eugenides made this a good read.
The first part of the novel begins in Turkey with Cal’s grandparents Desdemona and Lefty. Desdemona and Lefty grow up fairly isolated in a small village. They are Greeks, living as second class citizens under Turkish rule. Desdemona works in the family’s silk business, nurturing the silk worms who provide the means for the sibling’s survival. The close knit relationship of the siblings and the sudden upheaval caused when Turkey and Greece go to war lead Desdemona and Lefty to make a fateful decision that will have tragic consequences for the later generations of their family. The section of the novel focusing on Desdemona and Lefty is particularly enthralling and complex.
Middlesex is humorous, touching, tragic and shocking. While the subject matter might be shocking for some readers, the author manages to make all the characters seem sympathetic and believable. Middlesex is a wonderful and novel and definitely worth reading.
I did think that it was overly long. On the one hand, I loved getting all the background information about Cal's parents and grandparents. But I really do think it took up far too much time. One of my favorite things about this book was the depth Eugenides gave to story and characters; however, some of the things about Cal's parents and grandparents just didn't seem important to the overall story. This frustrated me, because while interesting, I still wanted to get to the point of the story: Cal.
When the time came for Cal's story, I was completely engrossed. His search for identity is dramatic and terrifying in all the ways it should be. And I LOVED the romance between him and "The Object." I thought that was a brilliant story to add to the larger narrative. Like Cal, I found myself wishing that I knew what happened to her.
I can see why this audiobook has won awards -- it is fantastic. Tabori puts life and vitality into the story and every character's dialogue. I even enjoyed the music tracks! I'm not usually the sort of person who likes music in her audiobooks, but I think that the way it was done in Middlesex was perfect. It wasn't there all the time, and it was subtly done. It helped to shift the tone between different parts of the story, which I found clever. While I don't think Middlesex would be any less good in print, the audiobook is certainly a pleasure to listen to, even considering its length.