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Middlesex: A Novel
Written by Jeffrey Eugenides
Narrated by Kristoffer Tabori
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Start ListeningDescription
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, MI, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them — along with Callie's failure to develop — leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia — back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives, back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Sprawling across eight decades — and one unusually awkward adolescence — Jeffrey Eugenide's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.
A Macmillan Audio production.
Book Actions
Start ListeningBook Information
Middlesex: A Novel
Written by Jeffrey Eugenides
Narrated by Kristoffer Tabori
Description
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, MI, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them — along with Callie's failure to develop — leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia — back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives, back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Sprawling across eight decades — and one unusually awkward adolescence — Jeffrey Eugenide's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.
A Macmillan Audio production.
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Reviews
I remember loving this, but I read it 5 years ago so I don't remember it all. The backstory with the grandparents was fascinating to read. I also like that it told Cal's whole story.
Rating: 5Well written. Engaging. Maybe a bit subjective.
Rating: 5A story of 3 generations and the consequences of life in a small town, then moving to Detroit. A story of refugees making it the US. Cal is an interesting and complex character who tells his families story with grace.
Rating: 5A Forrest Gump style family saga taking in much of 20c American history: immigration, Prohibition, speakeasys, Detroit car factories, industrial slump, race riots, hippies... I was actually drawn by the title, but felt the interesting part - Cal coming to terms with his gender, moving on from the freak show to holding down an interesting job in Germany was not not shown at all.
Rating: 3I stopped twice while reading this to read other books, which often is a sign that I'm not going to finish a book. I'm glad I did finish it though. I enjoyed it.
I found some of the historical passages hard to push through, but the parts of the book about the Stephanides family were quirky and I liked them.
I give Middlesex 3.5 stars, just because there were dull bits.
Rating: 3I found some of the historical passages hard to push through, but the parts of the book about the Stephanides family were quirky and I liked them.
I give Middlesex 3.5 stars, just because there were dull bits.
A how-to on weaving research, time. history, and family into a novel. With surprises, feints, and jabs to the nose, like a Doctorow novel but more fun (I still have not learned to use fun as a verb as my 20something friends do).
Rating: 5A perfect book
Rating: 5First book I have read about a hermaphrodite. Good writing
Rating: 3Possibly the best American novel since Grapes of Wrath.
Rating: 5I *loved* this book. Really, really loved. This was the first contemporary fiction I'd read in quite some time (I'm normally a Classics girl), and it was well worth going outside of my usual concentration. I felt fully immersed in the world of the book and as if I knew the characters and world personally, even though it was a time, place, and set of characters very different from my own life. There were some parts of it that required some suspension of disbelief though. My man John Linnell says this is his favourite book.
Rating: 5An excellent novel that makes one question love and sexuality. A little slow in parts.
Rating: 4Cal tells his story of growing up a girl, not realizing that he had a gene that made him intersex. His story goes back as a family saga of immigrants from Greece in the 1900s and how the family deals with questions of identity and race.There were moments the story dragged for me and I wasn't immediately blown away by it, but after reflection I have to say it's really well put together and has a lot of meat to it. I've been recommending it highly to friends who enjoy a literary, thought-provoking tale.
Rating: 4A great read!
Rating: 4Good book.
Rating: 5Not what I expected - a cross-generational story of Greek immigrants undergoing the American experiment, punctuated just slightly with gender identity issues. A very fun read.
Rating: 4I was heavily leaning towards giving this book 3 stars but went with four instead. I am not sure if that was the correct choice. With over 21 hours of listening time, being able to hold my attention is surely deserving of 4 stars.
More often than not this novel felt like it was two separate books. I get the connection and why the author felt all the backstory was needed but frankly I felt it had disjointed feel about it. It was highly entertaining! I enjoyed the back story far more than I enjoyed the parts specifically about Callie/Cal. I feel this book would have been better as a trilogy. Callie's struggles were real but I am not sure enough time was spent on her to really make me feel I knew the character. Perhaps that is the point as the character was questioning her own identity. At the end of the novel I found myself wondering what happening to Cal as he adjusted to living as a man. Not the boy Cal we were introduced to but the man.
If I had chosen to read the print edition I am not sure I would have stuck with it. The audio edition was the right choice for me. It was very well done.
Rating: 4More often than not this novel felt like it was two separate books. I get the connection and why the author felt all the backstory was needed but frankly I felt it had disjointed feel about it. It was highly entertaining! I enjoyed the back story far more than I enjoyed the parts specifically about Callie/Cal. I feel this book would have been better as a trilogy. Callie's struggles were real but I am not sure enough time was spent on her to really make me feel I knew the character. Perhaps that is the point as the character was questioning her own identity. At the end of the novel I found myself wondering what happening to Cal as he adjusted to living as a man. Not the boy Cal we were introduced to but the man.
If I had chosen to read the print edition I am not sure I would have stuck with it. The audio edition was the right choice for me. It was very well done.
Fascinating novel that blends the genres of picaresque adventure and biological casebook. Eugenides's construction of the story is flawless and the result is an absorbing meditation on gender, desire, identity and the fundamental human urge to fashion our own destiny.
Rating: 4i thought this book was a little over-rated
Rating: 3Spectacular.
Rating: 5Too self-consciously "comic."
Rating: 2excellent!
Rating: 4Strange, strange, strange.
Rating: 2Surprise delight. Transexual theme not really my cup of tea, but here it is tr eated in such a way as to intrigue and draw the reader in. Besides a good story it's full of information, myth, humour, atmosphere, surprise. Can't say I learned anything about the Trans issue, but just enjoyed the story, and in particular the Greek immigrant background presented with great warmth.
Rating: 5Really loved this one. Very readable coming of age story of a young intersex culturally Greek character, Cal/liope. Highly recommend.
Rating: 5I LOVED THIS BOOK!!! It's a sprawling family saga that chronicles, incest, hermaphrodites, love, confusion, immigration, identity, and the human condition. I was hooked from the beginning. The audiobook also does an amazing job bringing the Greek-American accents to life and is wildly entertaining. The story follows Calliope Stephanides and the three generations leading up to her. From a small village on Mount Olympus to industrial Detroit, this family saga is a masterpiece. Every character is wildly unique, wonderfully developed, and worth cheering for. All the stories weave together to help explain the curious case of Calliope's hermaphroditic existence. Engrossing, wonderful and all around amazing. Definitely worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it was awarded!
Rating: 5I loved this book. When it ended I wanted to read more. I loved the whole story and the characters. There was just something about it.
Rating: 5In this novel, Eugenides uses the story of a hermaphrodite as a metaphor for the ways in which immigrants are forced to straddle two worlds, each with its own culture, history and expectations. His meticulous recreations of 1920s Greece and 1970s Detroit give the book a feeling of authority that makes it easier to accept the oddities of its observant, candid narrator. It would have been even better had it been two hundred pages shorter.
Rating: 3To be honest, I found this book deeply disturbing, and had a hard time identifying with the protagonist. Normally I pride myself on my open-mindedness when it comes to literature, but I couldn't deal with it--the incestuous brother-sister relationship, the mermaid-stripper, the protagonist her/himself--it lost me. If you think you can handle it, I applaud your constitution. But count me out on Eugenides for the conceivable future.
Rating: 2I picked this book up in a charity shop for 50p. Had it been priced higher I probably wouldn't have bothered: although I'd had recommendations to read it, and despite its regular appearance on any number of 'books everyone should read' lists, I was fairly sure I wouldn't like it. And having bought it, I was pretty sure it would take me a long time to plough through it.I was wrong on both counts. I loved this book, and I neglected all sorts of important tasks while I devoured it in less than 48 hours. Right from this stark and startling opening sentence, this remarkable book surprises and moves the reader. It is the story of Greek-American Cal Stephanides, and of his family and genetic heritage and the circumstances which mean that he spends his early years as a little girl.It is an immensely powerful story, thought-provoking and it is beautifully told. I rather wished that we'd heard a little more of how Callie/Cal the subject became Cal the narrator, but on the other hand there is something very satisfying about the way that the book ends with a new beginning.The various strands of the story are interwoven in a way which engages interest and moves the narrative along in a lively manner. The historical and regional detail and atmosphere are beautiful, and the characters are very believable and human.Very strongly recommended.
Rating: 5The opening line - âI 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.â? - was the hook that got me to buy the book in the first place (browsing in the bookstore). Although at first glance it appears to be a book about sexual and gender identity and how that might transform one in a lifetime (especially if that one is a hermaphrodite) - it is really a far-reaching multi-generational family saga beginning in Turkey and ending in Detroit - with a few twists along the way. This book is a good read, with a compelling storyline and excellent character portraits. Where the read thins is during the narratorâs present life (scenes of which are interspersed throughout the tale) which seems surprisingly devoid of detail and character compared to the rest of the book. This aside, it was worth the purchase.
Rating: 3