Middlesex

This book has bits of stardust, hints of real brilliance. Yet, on the other hand, it is almost too much of a good thing.

I’m a sucker for a good opening line, and Eugenides delivers:
“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 Petosky, Michigan.”

Yay! That’s one intriguing opening first line. It has my attention!

Middlesex is also largely set in my home state of Michigan, and the author seems to nail most of the details (although the audiobook narrator did mispronounce Gratiot).

The narrative voice is simply incredible -- extraordinarily original and riveting.

However, this book is far, far too long. The plot is all over the place focusing on grandparents from Greece, three generations of family, The Great Depression, the Detroit Riots, and more. There are so many minor sub-plots and characters that nothing really sang—nothing really stood out as memorable. Characters are largely dropped for huge sections of the book, only to reappear briefly or not at all.

Some parts of the book just dragged. For example, Milton has three insurance policies for his business, and times are tough. Then, the Detroit Riots begin. Gee….what do you think will happen? Alright, just get there already!

Eugenides is clearly dripping with talent, but his gift hasn’t been sufficiently harnessed yet. This book feels like he is standing on the cliff of greatness, but he hasn’t gone over the edge yet, but he is right there. I really wanted to like this book more than I did.

Looking forward to Eugenides’s next book. Hopefully, not an epic the next time.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $10.67 through Pango
Audiobook – Free through Libby

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This is a book about transition.
Transition from child to adult to parent and grandparent.
From native to immigrant.
From brother and sister to husband and wife.
From rural dweller to urbanite.
From modest affluence to poverty and up again.
From loving language to losing the power of speech.
From geek to hippie.
From war through peace to civil unrest.
From belief to unbelief.
From rescued to rescuer.
From moral probity to corruption and crime.
Oh, and one character transitions from female to male.

The last of those is the book's USP, but don't let that fool you: it's no more limited to those with niche interests in intersex conditions than it's limited to those of Greek heritage. It is an unusual story, but with universal themes, told by a wonderfully engaging, lyrical, narrator.

Few of us fit neatly into binary categories. We all go through many transitions in our lives; the final one is "only another kind of emigration". This book speaks to everyone, not just those like Cal's family who "have always had a knack for self-transformation".

Plot
The family originally raised silkworms, so metamorphosis and long threads are at the heart of their lives as well as the story.

No fear of spoilers: the key aspects are summarised in the opening paragraphs, starting with: "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl... and then again, as a teenage boy." The rest of the book brings two strands together: Cal's grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona, fleeing the Turks in 1922 as siblings, and arriving in the US as husband and wife, and how that meant Cal ended up with a recessive intersex condition, and is now telling his story. He sometimes addresses the reader directly (shout outs to deus ex machina, Checkov's gun etc).

In many respects, it is a conventional sweeping family drama, of the ups and downs of the American Dream: building (and rebuilding) businesses against the backdrop of the Vietnam war and civil rights movement, but with an extra dose of teen angst about puberty (or lack thereof).

However, the final few chapters strike an oddly different tone. Octopussy's Garden is partly to hammer home the parallels with Greek mythology (and echo a passage in the middle where Cal muses on the transformations of puberty, using sea creatures as an analogy), but the final intrigue and chase felt very off-key, compared with the rest of the book.

There is also "an innate female circularity to the story", perhaps because Greeks believe "that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back to where you began." This is compounded by some reversal (like Amis's execrable "Time's Arrow"): in old age, Lefty's mind and memories go into reverse, and in an early section, Cal describes his birth like a film on rewind.

Destiny: The Known and Unknown
Cal is omniscient, not just when he remembers things he wouldn't be able to recall (including being a foetus), but also in terms of how much he knows about other people's inner thoughts and private actions. On a few occasions, it feels a little weird (the erotic significance of the grandmother's corset, for instance), but it's how he makes the more extraordinary aspects of the plot credible: he has already conjured believable characters the reader cares about.

Nevertheless, the lack of knowledge often displayed is staggering - yet just about plausible. The most significant examples are that Desdemona and Lefty get away with their relationship, and that no one realises Calliope (as he originally is) is not a girl. There are others, though, such as teenage fumblings and more, at which point Cal "clearly understood that I wasn't a girl but something in between", though the boy involved did not.

Some of the ignorance is cultivated. When Desdemona and Lefty fake a courtship on the boat, "Lefty never discouraged any speculation. He seized the opportunity of transatlantic travel to reinvent himself... Aware that whatever happened now would become the truth... Playing out this imaginary flirtation... they began to believe it... it wasn't other travellers they were trying to convince; it was themselves."

Forgetting also matters: "Everything about Middlesex [the house] spoke of forgetting and everything about Desdemona made plain the inescapability of forgetting."

There are echoes of Greek mythology throughout, which gives a certain weight and tone to how Cal tells it. For instance, "An infinite number of possible selves crowded the threshold" as Cal's parents prepare to conceive him, and it's no coincidence that his childhood church was the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, and that they later move to Middlesex Boulevard. It also creates an additional layer of foreshadowing. Cal's father is conceived after his parents see a play about a hybrid monster, and at a significant medical appointment about Cal, Milton (Cal's father) wears traditional Tragedy and Comedy masks as cufflinks: which way will it go?

Sex
Sexual identity is key. Desdemona is obsessed with predicting the sex of unborn children, and Cal himself was only conceived because his parents really wanted a girl (they already had a son) and believed they had found a way to improve the odds of that.

He was born at the women's hospital and "It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffering, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts." Nothing unusual was noticed by the elderly doctor, so "Five minutes old, and already the themes of my life - chance and sex - announced themselves."

There is relatively little about Cal's adaptation to living as a man (though there is a sweet sideline in learning how to date women, the perils of what to tell them when etc). Most of the story leads up to that realization: the agonies of not developing when her friends do, then growing oddly tall and awkward, struggling with infatuation with girls etc. However, there are glimpses of the adult issues: "I'm not androgynous... when Calliope surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment... It's a little like being possessed. Callie rises up inside me, wearing my skin like a loose robe... But then, just as suddenly, she is leaving, shrinking and melting away inside me". Cal is currently in Berlin and "This once-divided city reminds me of myself." A childhood trip to Cyprus was cancelled by annexation "Cyprus was being cut in half... like all the other places in the world that were no longer one thing or the other."

It is incest that causes Cal's condition, but there is no rancour in the telling of the story, perhaps because it's not just Desdemona and Lefty. Other cousins married each other (Cal's parents are cousins, conceived on the same day, who grew up together), and even some couples who are not related by blood have a rather incestuous aspect: a much older husband who treats his wife - in some ways - like a daughter; an engaged couple who split, only for the spurned man to marry the sister of her new boyfriend; one sibling suggesting another experiment with masturbation; a first sexual encounter with a best friend's brother, followed by intimacy with the friend. But none of it's salacious.

A quiet irony is that the English test at Ellis Island is about eunuchs.

Desdeomona
Cal's grandmother is central to the book. In many ways they have very contrasting lives, but there are surprising parallels too. After an initial coldness, there is a special bond between them: Desdemona disapproved of Milton and Tessie marrying, of trying to choose their sex of the baby, and was then upset when her prediction of a boy was wrong. However, she was quickly won over, at which point, Cal "gave Desdemona back her original sin".

She had been an innocent village girl, surprised by developments of her own body as well as her heart (and that of her brother). Her "body was a constant embarrassment to her. It was always announcing itself in ways she didn't want to sanction...[her] body was still a stranger to its owner", which applies just as much to Cal.

Similarly, just as Desdemona had to reinvent herself as wife instead of sister, and forge an identity in a new country, Callie becomes Cal, "Like a stroke victim [as Lefty was], I was having to learn all the most simple skills" and "I was like an immigrant" to the world of men.

Diagnosis and Treatment: What Determines Gender?
"From my birth when they went undetected, to my baptism where they upstaged the priest, to my troubled adolescence when they didn't do much of anything and then did everything at once, my genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me."

Gender is not always clearcut, "determined by a variety of influences: chromosomal sex; gonadal sex; hormones; internal genital structures; external genitals; and, most important, the sex of rearing." The last is the belief of the doctor, who saw it as "like a native tongue... imprinted in the brain during childhood." Cal, raised as a girl, proves otherwise.

Cal's father looks to medicine to "fix" her problem, and both parents react differently: "Milton heard the words that were there. He heard 'treatment' and 'effective'. Tessie, on the other hand, heard the words that weren't there. The doctor hadn't said my name... He hadn't said 'daughter' either. He didn't use any pronouns." Cal is left "poised between the print of genetics and the White Out of surgery." But "we're all made up of many parts."

Controversy: Appropriateness and Sensitivity
Some question Eugenides' right to write a book like this. He is Greek-American, but does not have any intersex condition and is not a trans person. Furthermore, Cal (and his doctors) uses the term "hermaphrodite", which many find offensive when applied to people.

As a straight cis woman, with no medical background, I guess I am not really in a position to defend against such criticisms. Nevertheless, I think those who actually read it would find it hard to take offence at the sensitive and insightful way this aspect is portrayed.

As for the H word, I expect it's what doctors in the 1960s would have used and there are still places where 5-Alpha-Reductase Deficiency is described in such terms. Eugenides has said: "The story of Hermaphroditus, the beautiful son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is one I retell, in modern guise, in two different sections of the book." and "I'm referring not to a person or a group of people but to a literary character." (From http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/M...)

For me, one of the bigger issues is the focus of mid-teen Cal's desires, "The Obscure Object". Calling a girl or woman an object can't be good, can it? Yet it doesn't come across as objectifying in the usual sense. It's more a way of preserving anonymity and distance, reflecting her special, idolised, position in Cal's life. More troubling is the the issue of consent. If one partner is apparently asleep but enjoying things, and the pattern is repeated over many nights, is that OK? As a plain question, I'd say not, but the way it's described, I'm inclined to sit firmly on the fence.
Another tricky aspect is the exploitation (or not) of sex workers; even if it's dressed up as empowerment, I'm not convinced it is.

Chapter Eleven
Cal's brother is only ever referred to as Chapter Eleven (a US statute relating to business bankruptcy); we never learn his real name. This is different from some other characters who are referred to by a nickname, but whose real names are stated.

Quotes
* "His shortness had a charitable aspect to it."
* "A sick person imprisoned in a healthy body."
* "She'd spend a decade in bed trying with vitality to die."
* "You used to be able to tell a person's nationality by their face. Immigration ended that. next... footwear. Globalization ended that."
* "Sparks fly across the city, inseminating every place they land with a germ of fire."
* "Motorcars parked like giant beetles... smokestacks rose everywhere, cannons bombarding the atmosphere... stacks in regimental rows or all alone puffing meditatively away."
* The Ford factory, "that controlled Vesuvius of chutes, tubes, ladders, catwalks, fire, and smoke known, like a plague or a monarch, only by a color: 'The Rouge'."
* African-American area of Detroit in the 50s, "The gloom of front porches and apartments without electricity seeped out into the streets and the thundercloud of poverty... directed attention... toward... forlorn, shadowless objects."
* Joining the Nation of Islam, "Women exchange the maids' uniforms of subservience for the white chadors of emancipation."
* "A group of boys whose main bond was their unpopularity."
* "There is no evidence against genetic determinism more persuasive than the children of the rich."
* "In the cedar swamp, verticality wasn't an essential property of trees... everywhere the grey skeletons of trees."
* Tranquillizers provide "a kind of viewing platform from which she could observe her anxiety."
* "San Francisco, that cold, identity-cleansing mist."


Apparently German is bad for conversation because the verb is at the end of the sentence, which means you can't interrupt (wouldn't that make it good?)!

.............................................

Review from 2008

Pulitzer prize winning story of a Greek-American hermaphrodite! Evokes sympathy for the most unlikely things (incest) and plausibly documents Callie/Cal's coming to terms with growing up and then discovering her/his true nature. When telling the family history, Cal sometimes uses the first person, and sometimes her/his name at the time, paralleling her/his feelings of empathy or detachment. Although close to her/his family in some ways, s/he more often refers to them by name (Milton, Tessie) than relationship (father, mother). Takes a slightly unexpected turn towards the end.

Το Middlesex θα μπορούσε εύκολα να γίνει δυσβάσταχτο στην ανάγνωση τύπου Λίγη Ζωή ή ακόμα μία πανάλαφρη αρλούμπα για την ιστορία 3 γενεών με πολλοστή αναφορά στην έρημη μικρασιατική καταστροφή (δεν θα αναφέρω βιβλία, αλλά νομίζω πιάσατε το νόημα).
Το γεγονός ότι ισορροπεί στην εντέλεια ανάμεσα σε αυτές τις παγίδες αναπτύσσοντας έναν τόσο δύσκολο χαρακτήρα με αξιοζήλευτο τρόπο, είναι αυτό που το κάνει αριστούργημα.

It goes without saying that this is one amazing book and my first Pulitzer winner as well. I took two weeks to read this one, but this is my issue, as always. I was incredibly inpatient, with a lifestyle that does not do well in relation to not being instantly gratified. This is such a special story, there is no instant anything. It is to be savoured and appreciated, there cannot be any rushing. I think I’m best in this instance to just write about my experience whilst reading this top notch book. Everyone knows the story, a story which I consider to be Cal’s and Cal’s only.

As always, my reading experience is so much better when I learn something, and this award winning book expanded my vocab (how many new ones did I come across here?!) and my knowledge of American lifestyle around the prohibition era, bits and pieces that unfortunately went over my head about Plato and all that jazz, and Turkish slash Greek historical events.

I am glad I read this, but I should be careful not to have high expectations in savouring books. I spent the last ten pages reading while playing cars with my 3 year old, I’d arrived at the point where I was so engrossed in coming full circle with Cal and his coming of age, that I simply had to keep going. I’m so glad Cal resisted in being swept up in ill-informed medical opinions from a man that had no idea of the person that was attached to the genitalia that he so harshly poked and prodded.

Then how nice was it to come across Desdemona at the end, I wondered what her ending was to be. I thought it fitting that it was she that communicated her long held secret to her grandson. A very ineloquent review to describe an amazing book, one that I recommend you become immersed in if you can grab the chance.

Една от най-добрите книги, които съм чела. Великолепна история - повествованието се лее, същевременно ставаш съпричастен на емоционалните терзания на разказвача. Страничните сюжетни линии са като пипала на октопод, но автора умело ги влита в основната история, като парчета от пъзел. Определено препоръчвам да се чете след “Брачната фабула”, обратното би лишило втората от блясъка и.

This was my first book by Eugenides, and I wasn't sure what to expect really. I expected a coming-of-age story, yes, but not like this.

This book has a little bit of everything. Part memoir, part family tree, part medical case study, part sexuality enlightenment, part love story, part cultural history and identity revolution... Eugenides could have called his book "Baklava" and been perfectly accurate. There are many layers to this story, each one adding their own little bit of deliciousness to the whole. :)

This story was really touching in a "This is my life & I'm just telling my story" kind of way. I didn't feel like Eugenides was trying to plunge his hand into my chest to tug at my heart-strings, but they were tugged nonetheless. At times, especially towards the end of the book, I was literally on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen. When Callie looks herself up in the dictionary, I couldn't help but be heartbroken for her.

I remember being a 14 year old girl and going through adolescence and puberty. It was hard enough without the added anxiety and strain of not knowing who you are. Calliope is one of the best characters I've read in a long time. Even through her fears and uncertainties about herself, she remains true to the essence of who she is underneath and refuses to let others decide her fate for her.

One of my favorite things about this story was the narrative. Eugenides prepares us for this with his first paragraph, stating that Calliope was born twice: once as a baby girl, and then again as a teenage boy. Cal's narrative shifts between first person narrative (when he speaks of himself as male) and third person (when he speaks of Callie as female, and when relating details about the family, their history, etc). I really felt that there was a defining line between Callie and Cal, and that while they ultimately are the same person, they were also two unique people living a single life at different stages.

Cal's omniscient recounting of events was sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always honest and brave. At least it felt that way to me. I really felt for Cal and wanted him to not only be accepted but to be truly loved. He is definitely a character worthy of love in my opinion.

This was a great story. There are some slow moments, but even during these, Eugenides writing carries the story. I would definitely recommend this book. Thank you for recommending this one, Jon!

If you're the type of person who covers your eyes as you watch a sex scene in a movie, this may not be the book for you. Some of the lovin' here is graphic and unconventional, and it's easy to squirm around in discomfort.

But, if you love good storytelling, great storytelling, you may be willing to overlook a few less than ideal feelings in your intestines.

Eugenides is an exceptional writer, and I marveled at some of his images. His writing is fresh and different and inviting. But, more than anything else, he is, at his core, a brilliant storyteller.

I could not turn away from this multi-generational account of a family of Greek immigrants and their unusual trajectory that leads to Cal, the damaged but lovable protagonist.

I won't be forgetting this story any time soon.

Jeffery Eugenes 2002 Pulitzer Price Winning novel is certainly something different!
A multi-generational epic of Cal(lie) Stephanides a intersex male with a gene defect mutation from his three generations Greek family narrates his experiences of having grown up as a girl.

The first half of the novel predominantly consists of Cal's family history dating back to Turkey in 1922 and follows both the incestuous relationships of his grandparents Lefty and Desdemona.
With the husband and wife/brother and sister arriving in America, the couple have two children Milton and Zoe.
Things get even more complicated and tangled as Milton marries second cousin Tess and eventually Callie is born...

As you can imagine this half us quite dense but the backdrop of Twenty Century American history keeps the plot moving.
Left working for Ford was really interesting and the Detroit race riots helps cement the family history in important real events.

It's the arrival of Callie in January 1960 that really helps speed up the narrative.
The author makes some interesting points of how male and female gender are placed into certain groups, from the types of clothes worn to various sports and hobbies expected from each sex.

Of course sex also plays an important role in the book itself, with Callie's thoughts on virginity and the expectations of her first period.

There's so many layers that makes this novel worthy of its prize giving status, the two main aspects that I'd loved the most was Cal's humourous first person narration and the vivid historical context that runs so strongly throughout.