Middlesex [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Eugenides (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 678 pages
• Publisher: FSG; 1st ed/1st printing edition (2003)
• ISBN-10: 2702885098
• ISBN-13: 978-2702885093
• ASIN: B000HKLROQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (986 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,805,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

434 of 450 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific novel!, March 25, 2003

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Middlesex: A Novel (Hardcover)

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 earnestness, the story grows more engaging with every page.

The brilliance of this book emerges not from the superficial story of a hermaphrodite but from the context - historical, scientific, psychological, political, geographical - of Cal's birth and subsequent rebirth. MIDDLESEX is about much more than gender confusion. Cal's mixed gender can be taken as a metaphor for the experience of first- and second-generations born of immigrants.

While the context of this story provides the substance, the characters provide the vibrancy. Cal emerges as a reliable and likeable narrator. He is sensible, good-humored, and intelligent. The spectrum of his experiences provides a smooth transition between childhood and adult, enabling the reader to embrace the character as both male and female. Cal's family is affectionately portrayed, even with their failings. (Cal's brother, Chapter Eleven, annoyed me with his name, a running gag, but even he ended up a full-blooded character by the end.)

Eugenides has written an expansive, compelling book. Despite its length of over 500 pages, the novel is not a slow read - unless the reader wants it to be, to make it last. Accessible, intelligent, well-paced and plotted, it should appeal to a wide range of readers.

I can't recommend this novel highly enough.

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece, September 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Middlesex: A Novel (Hardcover)

Having loved Eugenides's previous work, The Virgin Suicides, I waited patiently through the 1990s for a follow-up. When I was fortunate enough to snag an advance copy of Middlesex earlier this year, I expected nothing short of perfection from the author, and this novel met my expectations in every possible way. For the past few months, all I have been doing is telling people to buy this book upon its release; it's one of those rare literary novels that one can nevertheless recommend to just about any type of reader. From the very beginning, Middlesex draws the reader into its world; the narrator, Cal, formerly Calliope, Stephanides, is a hermaphrodite living as a man despite being raised as a woman. The major story within the novel is how Cal came to be (I won't ruin the fun for readers by going into detail), but along the way Middlesex discusses the Greek Diaspora following the first world war, incest, immigration, assimilation (and its rejection), racial relations, politics, and coming of age in the 1970s. Normally, one would expect such a densely packed novel to suffer under its own weight, but I found that the opposite was true; certain stories (e.g. Desdemona's brief time with the Nation of Islam) leave the reader wanting more, but the novel moves on. Eugenides is one of the most talented writers working today, and Middlesex is a novel that is accessible, funny, interesting, emotional, and, as other reviewers have indicated, thoroughly engrossing. This is one of the best works of contemporary literature I have read in quite some time.

64 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 * Pulitzer Prize Winner is Excellent, April 4, 2003

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Middlesex: A Novel (Hardcover)

Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex" belongs to the sprawling intergenerational book genre, but he explores themes with a fresh perspective. Calliope (later Cal) is the omniscient narrator of a story that begins in 1922 Smyrna, Asia Minor and ends almost 80 years later in Berlin. Most of the story takes place in Detroit, a city that he describes with great insight and emotion. Eugenides expertly switches between the voices of the grown-up Cal and the young Calliope; therefore, we experience events as Calliope did, but with the perspective of Cal (at age 40). Calliope is a winning storyteller, observant, funny, and with realistic childhood and adolescent feelings. Throughout the book, Eugenides demonstrates that Callie's circumstances underlie experiences shared by all: Pain, love, confusion, feelings of being both the same as and different from. I think Eugenides somewhat underestimates the emotional toll that Callie's journey would entail, particularly during her long separation from her family as she makes the psychological transformation from Calliope to Cal. Usually; however, the insights and feelings are so true that it reads like an autobiography.

While the story is compelling, there are some problems that interfere with a fluid read. At times, narrative transitions are handled awkwardly through either through over use of ellipses (...) or with somewhat clunky sentences: 'Milton stepped on the gas, ignoring the scarcity not only of petroleum but of many other things as well,' which breaks into a long list of scarce hope, food, phone calls, clean socks, etc. He also overplays his hand at the Greek tragic motif he is constructing ('Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation'!'; though he later, in apparent contradiction, concludes that we can forge our own truer identities) and in his broad caricatures of ethnic and religious types. There's also a sly quality that sets up "surprise" situations: In the most egregious case of 'magical realism,' or just plain gimmickry, Eugenides uses the conceit of using his fictional character 'Jimmy Zizmo' as the 'real' identity of the actual character, Nation of Islam Muslim founder W.D. Farr, and the denouement concerning Calliope's father and uncle lacks credibility. Mostly though, Eugenides' story is compelling and humorous, and he masterfully evokes place and character (industrial Detroit; a hilarious indictment of an ultra-hip 1970s-era surgeon/sexologist), with a casual ease that nicely belies the serious themes.

The book bears some resemblance to Michael Chabon's own Pulitzer Prize winner, "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." In both, the immigrant experience and the forging of a new identity are central, characters journey to find their own "American dream," and urban settings help shape their lives. While Chabon is the more nimble phrase writer, Eugenides is similarly poignant and symbolic. Like Chabon, Eugenides uses metaphor (based on reality) as he explores the ideas of being 'different,' the sometimes-artificial nature of boundaries, and the Greek notion of fate. It is an entertaining and often moving story that, despite some minor annoyances, I recommend very highly.