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 pronouns, and so avoid the he/she conflicts that we readers were dealing with in thinking about Calli/Cal. Most (maybe all) of the events external to the family were real historical events that he worked into the plot. To Bill, who grew up near Detroit (but not in Gross Point), the description of the race riots was very true to life. (Now why did he expend so much energy on things like the burning of Smyrna and the riots in Detroit? Were the scenes put in to titilate the reader? Or were they merely plot devices, to get the family to embark on another move? Or are they metaphors for the transformation that the family, and ultimately Cal(i), are going through.