Gaia: Community that Changes the World

About This Book

Middlesex: A Novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides

A Favorite of 2, Read by 25, Owned by 18, Reviewed by 1, Quotes 0

"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." And so begins...(more) Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory. Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor: Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." … I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Active Members

sbrazen

Gaia Child

Marylyn

Writer

rknrlhrt

Halcyon

Rebecca

Humanitarian

MightyMama

Zoo Keeper

Zerjio

Seeker of Wisdom

Belen

Gaia Explorer

Stella

scooter

See all 61 members...

Book Activity

sbrazen became a member ()

marlon became a member ()

simplygreen became a member ()

More...

Book Grapevine

More...

Advertising keeps Gaia free! Interested in sponsoring us?

Current Authors

No Authors have been linked from this book to the authors in our database. Although we have Amazon's listing of authors (see below), this is not yet linked to authors in our database. It would be very helpful to us if you could add the authors of this book to our database, using the form on this page.

Amazon lists Authors as:

Jeffrey Eugenides

Current Authors

Amazon lists Authors as:

Add a New Author

Gaia Community

Explore

Inspire

The Gaiam Network

Favorite Quotes