Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides

x, 529, [1] sivua ; 20 cm

English language

Published 2003 by Bloomsbury.

ISBN:: 978-0-7475-6162-0

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver-s license...records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and …

16 editions

sifuCJC reviewed Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Wonderful stuff

4 stars

This is a great book. Good writing, engaging story, full characters. For some reason I couldn't get into it though, like it wasn't what I was looking for. But don't listen to me; it really is a wonderful book, and Eugenides is a wonderful writer.

lukethelibrarian reviewed Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

2022 #FReadom read 13/20

4 stars

I just finished Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, the 13th book in my 2022 #FReadom reading list of books removed or threatened in Texas libraries and schools. I found Cal Stephanides to be a truly scintillating narrative voice for a fascinating story.

Eugenides offers rich, multithreaded explorations of Detroit, Greek-American family life, and other areas near his own experience. And he may lead some readers to reflect on the meaning of sex & gender, despite rooting the story overall in rather binary notions of gender.

But I believe the novel's insights on gender identity and intersex reality would have been deeper & more insightful had Eugenides actually spoken with intersex people when writing the novel. Sadly, he didn't - a disappointing missed opportunity. www.intersexinitiative.org/popculture/middlesex-faq.html