Middlesex

A Novel

Paperback, 529 pages

English language

Published Dec. 3, 2002 by Picador.

ISBN:
978-0-312-42215-8
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4 stars (87 reviews)

A unique coming of age story. While the main character in this novel is dealing with gender identity issues the main focus of this brilliantly written story is the confusion we all face as we grow into the person we were meant to be. The reader finds himself identifying with the main character's experiences. This is a brilliantly written story. The prose is honest in a way that few authors dare to write. Every word, every action, every thought, is symbolic of the common human experience.

40 editions

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

Review of 'Middlesex' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Novela estilo decimonónico (aunque el narrador se toma unas libertades más bien contemporáneas), tres generaciones de una familia blablabla. Me lo he pasado pipa: combina las peripecias de una familia de griegos de Asia Menor emigrada a Detroit con las dificultades del protagonista con el sexo (literalmente: mutación genética, hermafrodita). Personajes bien construidos, ritmo narrativo ágil, buenas dosis de ironía y cachondeo... ¿quién necesita más?.

Review of 'Middlesex' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

When Jeffrey Eugenides set out to write Middlesex he wanted to “[tell] epic events in the third person and psychosexual events in the first person”. He had decided that the voice “had to render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man, or an adult male-identified hermaphrodite”. This was no easy task; he had to seek expert advice about intersexuality, sexology, and the formation of gender identity. His motivation came from reading the 1980 memoir Herculine Barbin and being unsatisfied by the lack of detail about intersex anatomy and his emotions.

”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 of 1974.”

If you’ve read Jeffrey Eugenides before you will know he doesn’t just stop at one issue, Middlesex is also loosely …

Review of 'Middlesex' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A large, sweeping literary novel that is clearly ambitious but for for me does not reach the heights it aims for. There are whole sections in this book that are just beautifully done (I loved the entire story of Desdemona and Lefty, and the section with the Obscure Object, and the scenes in the mermaid tank), but others that drag on and on. Some characters are very real and well drawn (Desdemona, again) and others are practically not there at all (Milton and Tessie). Although Cal/Calliope's voice was distinct in both the first and third person narratives, the point in the book where she runs away and begins to live life as a man seemed abrupt and not in character.

I think I would have preferred a more tightly told story of either Desdemona or of Cal, but not both.

Review of 'middlesex' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Oof, I haven't reviewed this one either? It's been even longer since I've read most of this one. Goodness.



This book...what can you say about a book like this? It's an epic - Calliope sheepishly admits to her intentions right off the bat, but she fulfills them well - spanning four(ish) generations, and a wide range of cultures, subjects, and individuals. It makes for a packed book, but at over 500 pages, there is ample room for everything that ends up packed in here.



As the title not-so-subtly implies, this book features, and is narrated by, Cal(liope) - an intersexed individual who, having transitioned from female to male, writes a retrospective of her family - not just his parents, but his grandparents, and even great-grandparents, tracing his ancestry - and the genetic mutation that made him who he is - back to its roots in Greece.



But this book is …

Review of 'middlesex' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Oof, I haven't reviewed this one either? It's been even longer since I've read most of this one. Goodness.



This book...what can you say about a book like this? It's an epic - Calliope sheepishly admits to her intentions right off the bat, but she fulfills them well - spanning four(ish) generations, and a wide range of cultures, subjects, and individuals. It makes for a packed book, but at over 500 pages, there is ample room for everything that ends up packed in here.



As the title not-so-subtly implies, this book features, and is narrated by, Cal(liope) - an intersexed individual who, having transitioned from female to male, writes a retrospective of her family - not just his parents, but his grandparents, and even great-grandparents, tracing his ancestry - and the genetic mutation that made him who he is - back to its roots in Greece.



But this book is …

Review of 'Middlesex' on Goodreads

4 stars

Oof, I haven't reviewed this one either? It's been even longer since I've read most of this one. Goodness.



This book...what can you say about a book like this? It's an epic - Calliope sheepishly admits to her intentions right off the bat, but she fulfills them well - spanning four(ish) generations, and a wide range of cultures, subjects, and individuals. It makes for a packed book, but at over 500 pages, there is ample room for everything that ends up packed in here.



As the title not-so-subtly implies, this book features, and is narrated by, Cal(liope) - an intersexed individual who, having transitioned from female to male, writes a retrospective of her family - not just his parents, but his grandparents, and even great-grandparents, tracing his ancestry - and the genetic mutation that made him who he is - back to its roots in Greece.



But this book is …

Review of 'Middlesex' on 'LibraryThing'

4 stars

This is quite an epic. Spanning more than a hundred years, from Greece to the USA, this is Calliope's story of her grandparents, her parents and her self, plus the small matter of the entire world around them.

I'm not going to put down work enough to review this book the way it should be reviewed, rather than I know that Jeffrey Eugenides reportedly spent 10 years researching and writing this novel, and I feel as though it's been written in an eloquent breath. It feels effortlessly written, as as such, I believe it to be a resounding success, given its many complexities, all masterfully written. I feel like the author went through many hours of brain-work trying to think of ways to explain this massive story to the reader in an intelligent, funny and often witty way.

While the reader is at all times chaperoned throughout Calliope's history by …

Review of 'Middlesex' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is quite an epic. Spanning more than a hundred years, from Greece to the USA, this is Calliope's story of her grandparents, her parents and her self, plus the small matter of the entire world around them.

I'm not going to put down work enough to review this book the way it should be reviewed, rather than I know that Jeffrey Eugenides reportedly spent 10 years researching and writing this novel, and I feel as though it's been written in an eloquent breath. It feels effortlessly written, as as such, I believe it to be a resounding success, given its many complexities, all masterfully written. I feel like the author went through many hours of brain-work trying to think of ways to explain this massive story to the reader in an intelligent, funny and often witty way.

While the reader is at all times chaperoned throughout Calliope's history by …

Review of 'Middlesex' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Mostly well-liked. Mary just barely finished it. Stephanie didn't even start it, but tried to dredge up memories of the first time she read it. Bill read it for the first time, and would like to read it again, but, at 529 pages, not anytime soon. I read it for the second time, and liked it better this time around. And Jenna, having already read it once, decided to listen to it on tape this time around, but is only about a third of the way through. (And Carolyn, who had planned to be here, didn't show. Couldn't get the tape, or couldn't find the time?) The book did play like a Greek tragedy, where everyone's fate is preordained. (And perhaps Eugenides expected more knowledge of classical theatre in his audience than actually exists.) Evidentally, he wrote it in the first person so as to be able to use non-gender-specific …

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Subjects

  • Greek Americans -- Fiction.
  • Gender identity -- Fiction.
  • Hermaphroditism -- Fiction.
  • Teenagers -- Fiction.
  • Grosse Pointe (Mich.) -- Fiction.
  • Detroit (Mich.) -- Fiction.

Lists