4.5 stars

The whole story is a kind of confession by the main character. It includes the history of his, or her, grandparents who were forced to flee to the US due to the Turkish-Greek arm conflict at the beginning of the 20th century. It narrates the love story of the protagonist’s parents. Finally, it covers a part of the protagonist's adult life as a man. This type of narration resembles a family saga, such as Buddenbrooks or One hundred years of solitude.

Born and raised as a girl, when she reaches her adolescence our heroine discovers more or less unexpectedly that she has a special genetic mutation. The author himself explains: “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.”

One of the most important things that one might draw from this book is the idea that can be well expressed in the following citation: “After I returned from San Francisco and started living as a male, my family found that, contrary to popular opinion, gender was not all that important.”
In other words, we all are in the first place just humans with our own characteristics and individual traits. Yes, they depend on our gender, but also on many other factors. Gender itself is determined by various socio-cultural factors, such as upbringing and education, not only by chromosomal sex. That’s why it would be rather stupid to stick a label on anyone only based on their sex. It would be unwise to give so much significance to the different social roles and behavioral patterns attributed to females and males. Life is much more complex than that.
Moreover, the ability to accept something new or very uncommon and to integrate it into our lives can be very helpful and contribute to our personal development. This is the case with the family of our protagonist.
Although he ends up living as a male, he nevertheless remains his mother’s daughter, bringing together both masculine and feminine sides. People who love him have to accept it. As it turns out in the end, they manage to do it and get used to the change he goes through from a girl to a boy.

However, as a proverb puts it, there is always a black fly in your Chardonnay- there are almost five hundred pages in this book and too many details. The reader may feel lost in them.

The story is about the last carrier/inheritor of the 5-alpha-reducatse deficiency syndrome in the Stephanides family, spanning over 80 years. This condition is caused by a recessive genetic mutation, resulting in an intersexual individual, known as a 'hermaphrodite', a normative, historical term, which originates from the Greek mythological figure called 'Hermaphroditus'

The story begins in the Greek Mythology, winding its way through the history of a Greek community in Turkey, who were forced to flee with the burning of Smyrna in 1922.

The story continues in America, incorporating the immigrant experience and modern American history with much empathize on the 1960's and 1970's.

Callie, or Cal, short for Calliope, is the narrator, writing his memoir in a supple, complex and intimate voice. Some of the well-developed characters have Greek names, others have unusual nicknames, such as Cal's brother 'Chapter Eleven' and a girlfriend called 'the Object'

The title of the book not only suggests the androgynous nature of the protagonist, but also suggest the Anglophilian nature of American suburban pretensions.

The first 50 pages of the book determines if the reader will want to continue or not. Incest is a difficult, creepy subject to persist with, and I almost made a u-turn and called it a day, if it wasn't for so many Goodreads friends who finished the book! I have come to rely on your judgement and taste in books.

It was certainly an unusual book: part immigrant saga, part psychological novel, part comic, part medical mystery, mixed in with historical fiction and Greek mythology. The prose was undoubtedly beautiful. It is so multileveled that it certainly cannot easily be pigeonholed. It can probably be described as the metamorphosis of three generations of Greek immigrants in the American history. The portion of the book dealing with the history of Detroit was fascinating to me. The history of silk and the American adaptation of the industry by Muslim citizens kept me reading on.

It was also a brilliant book on so many levels, especially writing about intersexuality in such a detailed but endearing way, and including the extensive historical, literary, medical and psychological research in the text.

However, I felt at times that there was too much information dumping, although the rhythm of the book was never interrupted. The story was predictable as well. Everything was overall believable, embedded in reality and highly informative. It is not a book for the fainthearted, although a sense of humor will enable readers to lighten up the often dark undertones in the book. The author managed to keep the story palatable by his often sharp or otherwise subtle wit. In the end it is a beautiful story of love.

I enjoyed the experience, but to be honest, I am glad it is over. I got bored here and there, and made an effort to finish, although it was truly a great book to read.

I like books with family stories but it was very dull at some parts.

For me the start was really exciting with the grandparents.
The when they got to America it dragged for me. Over abundance of information.
Picked up towards the end again when it was more about Cal's discovery.

ATTENTION!!!! ATTENTION!!!!
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!!!!

Instead: take your unread copies and donate them to your local public library or tuck them away on your shelves to look pretty among the assorted spines. Then immediately go and sit in front of your computer. Log on to your Audible account and use that credit for Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, narrated by Kristoffer Tabori. You will not be sorry.

I will start off by saying that this was not at all what I thought it would be. I was expecting serious and political, written with a heavy literary hand. Not at all. Instead I got charming, witty, clever, unique, ambitious, and endearing. I laughed out loud so many times. This was humor of the dry variety: clever and subtle and easy to overlook by the those with...well, a different kind of sense of humor. And what an ending! The book started strong and just kept picking up steam. It was a snowball going down the hill, growing bigger and bigger until it satisfyingly smashed against the wall. By the last quarter of the book my life WAS THIS BOOK. I wanted to do nothing else but sit still and listen: no cleaning, no laundry. Just listening.

This was a perfect book. No flaws! Seriously! I've only made that claim once before (and that was for A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry: completely different but also perfect). And that brings me to my next point of praise: THE NARRATION. I feel like this book is strongest in audio format. This narrator WAS Calliope Stephanides. He hit all the notes with the other voices as well. This narrator delivered these lines masterfully. He had a BIG job, because this book has it all: compassionate incest, prohibition and speak-easies, questionable religious organizations, curious use of musical instruments, painful hair removal... and that's just naming a few.

If you're planning on reading this, I would urge you instead to take the audio route. Kristoffer Tabori has coaxed this work into its fullest expression with this performance. Every word was a pleasure, worthy of the Pulitzer AND a spot on my short list of the very best books I've ever read (or, listened to!) in my life. 5 STARS!!!!

An epic story documenting the lives and relationships of three generations of a Greek/Turkish family who are forced to flee their homeland to America as a result of a historic and tragic event. Well, that's more the backdrop than the story - the real deal here is the account of the third generation hermaphrodite: the inter-relationships and secrets that preceded his/her birth and life thereafter.

It's stunningly well written and I found myself constantly looking up words I'd never come across before - some of them linked to ancient Greek myths and legends, others were medical terms associated with hermaphroditism but many were just obscure, but interesting, alternatives to the norm. I'm not sure I'll remember many and will probably re-use next to none, but I do feel I've received an education.

It's a long and totally absorbing book - well worth tracking down if you like to immerse yourself in an engrossing and complex story.

Would have given this book two more stars except for one resounding disappointment I can't get past. I thought that one of the most important aspects of the book was entirely skipped over by the author without any explanation.

*Spoiler Alert* It's probably not a spoiler, but what I have to say may alleviate some of the intrigue - you have been warned.

I really, really, really wanted to know why Calliope 'chose' to live life as Cal once she learned that she was a biological male. It was, arguably, the most important and perhaps only choice she->he had in the entire book, and the author just skips that part. This transitionless transition to living as a male stands in stark comparison to the rest of the book which does a competent job of developing each of the main characters throughout their lives...and for every other seemingly inexplicable action the reader understands the characters enough to know WHY they acted in a certain way.

The Calliope->Cal change is so abrupt in the book, and lacks any of the personal insight that the rest of the book teems with...it's almost like the author got tired of writing by the time the transition comes about (quite late in the book), and he just wanted to be done with it. Perhaps the author didn't expand on the "choice" to live as Cal because his point is supposed to be that it really wasn't a choice. But I would even have liked to know why Calliope didn't think living as Cal was a choice and was instead a biological or personal inevitability...but no aspect of her choice/lack of choice was addressed.

Inappropriate foreshortening aside, I do think that the writing is often quite eloquent. I certainly would have appreciated fewer of the cliche metaphors for change/new beginnings/etc. The author does take the obvious to new heights, however, when he would state for the reader too obtuse to understand that the egg being described actually represents an immigrant beginning life in her new land by ending the paragraph with something like, "...you see she was that egg."

This book has all the major players....

Incest, war, teenage girl-on-girl experimental sex, deadheads, undescended testes, and a 2 inch penis.

Yep, it took me all of one chapter to realize that Middlesex was referring to something besides a county in England.

Best Part: Answering Maurice's question "What's that about?" then watching him squirm and cross his legs in obvious pain.

Worst Part: Glaring Oprah sticker on the cover telling me I've succumbed to the masses.

Back in the era of the paper book (before people started furtively reading Fifty Shades of Grey and Mein Kampf* on their tablets and whatnot) there were certain books that you'd see everywhere; bedside tables, in this hands of fellow commuters, and staking out beach-chair territory.

Even in the digital era, there are books that it seems like everyone is reading. When this happens, I exhibit a distinct (albeit self-defeating) behavioral pattern wherein if I don't read it hot off the presses, I then feel all late to the game, can't decide when it's the right "moment" for me to pick it up and, thus, miss out on all the fun.†

For me, n  n    Middlesexn  n fell prey to this cycle, so many thanks to Steve for suggesting I pick it up, because it was most definitely worth it. This book contains multitudes. It's a multi-generational epic (our narrator, Cal, invokes the muses), reminiscent of John Irving in that the passage of time shifts your focus as characters age, and cede the limelight to younger generations.

Middlesex certainly lends itself to the discussion of biological pre-determinism, the difference between gender and sex, and all sorts of topics pertaining to heteronormative cultural expectations. But, I just don't feel up to the task. Furthermore, I don't want to reduce the story arc to those standout frameworks. Cal reflects on his (as narrator he identifies as a male- so, go with it) own reticence to be an activist or icon, often leaning towards the path of least resistance (or avoidance) in his adult relationships:

n  n    “A word on my shame: I don't condone it.”n  n

Likewise, there is more to identity than gender and sexuality, and social stigma is bred from a variety of sources. This is a story of immigration, assimilation, wealth, race, inequality, generational disconnects, and the horrible, awkward, universal experience of adolescent becoming.

n  n    “The adolescent ego is a hazy thing, amorphous, cloud like. It wasn’t difficult to pour my identity into different vessels. In a sense, I was able to take whatever form was demanded of me.”n  n

The book is not without faults, but flows in spite of certain clunky edifices. It even made me laugh a time or two – the Canada commentary toward the end was a favorite moment of the jingoistic elderly in rare form.

“But who knew what would happen once he got to Canada? Canada with its pacifism and its socialized medicine! Canada with its millions of French speakers! It was like…like…like a foreign country!”

________________________________
* This is (depressingly) true. Hitler's Mein Kampf tops ebook download charts regularly (see article speculating as to the why here).
† I'm currently doing this with n  The Goldfinchn, so someone make a note to remind me to get on that if haven't read it in a year or two.

a combination of a bildungsroman and a family saga, middlesex traces the impact of a mutated gene across three generations of a greek family, and how it shapes the protagonist cal’s life. eugenides cites the explorations of hermaphrodism in greek myths as an inspiration for the novel, in which cal acts out the story of hermaphroditus, the greek deity of bisexuality and effeminacy.

this book was published in 2002 so it’s kind of a given that the language around gender identity is a little outdated, but it’s still an incredible portrait of a young intersex man seeking to understand himself, his identity, his sexuality, his heritage, and carve out his own future.

Wait a minute.....

I KNOW I rated this book....Even wrote a review ....(so I thought).

Just how many books had I read --that were FAVORITES ---that I said nothing??? I especially loved the ending!

Apparently --'several'!

I must have had more of a life -before- I wrote reviews! haha!

Middlesex is much more than a gender novel. It’s a big book, in length, depth, and breadth, and yet it’s compelling and thoroughly readable. If you’ve held off reading Middlesex, feeling skeptical or intimidated, you really shouldn’t wait any longer.

My full review of Middlesex is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.

I admit it. I was surprised by Middlesex.

Back when I got stuck in the doldrums of The Shipping News, finally tossing it overboard, then wasted my time with The Stone Diaries a year later, I subconsciously vowed to ignore the Pulitzer Prize forever. I broke that vow in '99 for The Hours, but that was because one of my mentors knew Cunningham, and he recommended The Hours because he knew my love for Mrs. Dalloway. I went straight back to my personal embargo, though, and it stuck until 2009 when I finally caved and read The Road.

I wouldn't say the embargo lifted after that, but my conviction definitely waned, so when I needed something to listen to on my long commute and saw Jeffrey Eugenides's audiobook version of Middlesex on sale for $7.99, I caved and decided to give it a go.

I expected crap when I started listening, but when Lucky and Desdemona hit Detroit I really started to dig it, and when it ended today with Cal/liope learning the truth of the 5-alpha-reductase deficiency from his YaYa, the recessive gene that made him a hermaphrodite, I realized I'd been a convert to Middlesex's beauty for the bulk of the book.

I don't know if I would be as impressed with Middlesex if I had read it rather than listening to it because Kristoffer Tabori's vocal performance was absolutely mindblowing. I don't think I have heard too many vocal performances that can beat his work on Middlesex. He's no Orson Welles playing Lamont Cranston, but he kicks the crap out of most of the contemporary voice actors I've heard in animated movies and audiobooks. His voices were so distinct, his performance so complex, that characters masking their voices over telephones or through heating ducts had just enough of their original voices to be recognizable while still convincingly masking them from others in the story. Even better, Tabori turned much of Eugenides' prose into poetry. Or -- perhaps -- Tabori simply revealed the poetry of Eugenides' words that were there all along.

I like to think that's the case because the way Eugenides writes about Detroit, San Francisco, and Smyrna is some of the most beautiful metroprose I've ever heard, and I found myself caring for every character Cal/liope came in contact with. I'd hate to know that Tabori's performance made the story better than it really is (although I have a sneaking suspicion that I'd have felt some of Eugenides' descriptions and characterizations were a touch precious without Tabori's performance). So I will never actually read this book now that I've listened to it. I like this story, and I want to keep on liking it.

So am I finally back reading the Pulitzer Prize winners? I dunno. Perhaps. But even if I do start reading them again, I won't be seeking them out.

Maybe I'll buy them on audiotape, instead. You never know what the bargain bin is going to turn up.