Middlesex

Reading a novel about a hermaphrodite is something I never thought I would enjoy, but I was wrong. Middlesex is an excellent book. Jeffery Eugenides is a talented and insightful writer. He describes how Greek immigrants of both sexes had to work hard to survive in Detroit in the early part of the 20th century. Lefty is a fictional character in the novel. I loved reading about how hard he worked to improve his life. He... Read Full Review

I wasn't enthusiastic about reading this book. I'd found "Virgin Suicides" good but slight and rather depressing. The blurb led me to think it it might crude pornography about a transvestite, like "Myra Breckenbridge" (not that I don't think Vidal is great) and finally I was put off by learning that it was a panorama of twentieth history - when I want history I read history books. Anyway it found its way into my house the... Read Full Review

From the first sentence of Jeffrey Eugenides' MIDDLESEX, I was hooked by this complicated tale of a young girl who grows into a man. The story of Cal Stephanides begins generations before his birth, in a small Greek village, when his grandparents succumb to incestuous desires. Immigration to the United States keeps Desdemona and Lefty's secret intact - until their grandchild Cal reaches puberty. Told with both humor and... Read Full Review

Though Middlesex's leading man(Cal)/lady(Callie) is a hermaphrodite, the book spends only a few of its pages exploring what it is like to view, or experience, the world from the perspective of both sexes at once. So if this is what you are looking for in the book, you will surely be disappointed. Rather, the book's principal theme is more universal: how little control we have over who we become. Eugenides narrative skillfully... Read Full Review