Middlesex
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Middlesex traces the story of
Cal Stephanides, a 41-year-old hermaphrodite who begins life as a girl, Calliope,
before experiencing one of the most extraordinary and memorable transformations
in contemporary literature. Continuing the tradition of great fictional "autobiography," such
as Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Calliope takes her sweet time being born;
the first section of the novel focuses on her Greek ancestors (or should I say "incestors"?),
who flee Asia Minor for the United States, and unwittingly seal her genetic fate.
Anticipating the narrator’s destiny, the Stephanides clan slowly metamorphoses
after settling in mid-century Detroit, maintaining a hybrid (and often hilarious)
duality: not quite Greek, not quite American. In the decades leading up to – and
through – Calliope’s almost surreal adolescence, Eugenides offers
us a narrative voice that is truly astonishing: fresh, direct, vivid, poignant,
and utterly unique. For those of us (like myself) who are connoisseurs of the
gray areas in life, Middlesex deftly and delightfully turns many of our most
dearly held assumptions about gender, identity, and intimacy neatly on their
heads. Yet Eugenides never takes the easy road into relativism or simple fatalism.
In a world where historical, emotional, and physical upheaval – both around
us and within us – can obliterate our sense of the familiar at any moment,
he affirms the tenacious pursuit of what is meaningful, beautiful, and honorable. Neal
Kane
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