"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 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


From Publishers Weekly
As the Age of the Genome begins to dawn, we will, perhaps, expect our fictional protagonists to know as much about the chemical details of their ancestry as Victorian heroes knew about their estates. If so, Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides) is ahead of the game. His beautifully written novel begins: "Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce's study, 'Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites.' " The "me" of that sentence, "Cal" Stephanides, narrates his story of sexual shifts with exemplary tact, beginning with his immigrant grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty. On board the ship taking them from war-torn Turkey to America, they married-but they were brother and sister. Eugenides spends the book's first half recreating, with a fine-grained density, the Detroit of the 1920s and '30s where the immigrants settled: Ford car factories and the tiny, incipient sect of Black Muslims. Then comes Cal's story, which is necessarily interwoven with his parents' upward social trajectory. Milton, his father, takes an insurance windfall and parlays it into a fast-food hotdog empire. Meanwhile, Tessie, his wife, gives birth to a son and then a daughter-or at least, what seems to be a female baby. Genetics meets medical incompetence meets history, and Callie is left to think of her "crocus" as simply unusually long-until she reaches the age of 14. Eugenides, like Rick Moody, has an extraordinary sensitivity to the mores of our leafier suburbs, and Cal's gender confusion is blended with the story of her first love, Milton's growing political resentments and the general shedding of ethnic habits. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this book is Eugenides's ability to feel his way into the girl, Callie, and the man, Cal. It's difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender. This is one determinedly literary novel that should also appeal to a large, general audience. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-From the opening paragraph, in which the narrator explains that he was "born twice," first as a baby girl in 1960, then as a teenage boy in 1974, readers are aware that Calliope Stephanides is a hermaphrodite. To explain his situation, Cal starts in 1922, when his grandparents came to America. In his role as the "prefetal narrator," he tells the love story of this couple, who are brother and sister; his parents are blood relatives as well. Then he tells his own story, which is that of a female child growing up in suburban Detroit with typical adolescent concerns. Callie, as he is known then, worries because she hasn't developed breasts or started menstruating; her facial hair is blamed on her ethnicity, and she and her mother go to get waxed together. She develops a passionate crush on her best girlfriend, "the Object," and consummates it in a manner both detached and steamy. Then an accident causes Callie to find out what she's been suspecting-she's not actually a girl. The story questions what it is that makes us who we are and concludes that one's inner essence stays the same, even in light of drastic outer changes. Mostly, the novel remains a universal narrative of a girl who's happy to grow up but hates having to leave her old self behind. Readers will love watching the narrator go from Callie to Cal, and witnessing all of the life experiences that get her there.Jamie Watson, Enoch Pratt Free Library, BaltimoreCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Eugenides's second novel (after The Virgin Suicides) opens "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl...in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy...in August of 1974." Thus starts the epic tale of how Calliope Stephanides is transformed into Cal. Spanning three generations and two continents, the story winds from the small Greek village of Smyrna to the smoggy, crime-riddled streets of Detroit, past historical events, and through family secrets. The author's eloquent writing captures the essence of Cal, a hermaphrodite, who sets out to discover himself by tracing the story of his family back to his grandparents. From the beginning, the reader is brought into a world rich in culture and history, as Eugenides extends his plot into forbidden territories with unique grace. His confidence in the story, combined with his sure prose, helps readers overcome their initial surprise and focus on the emotional revelation of the characters and beyond. Once again, Eugenides proves that he is not only a unique voice in modern literature but also well versed in the nature of the human heart. Highly recommended.- - Rachel Collins, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Middlesex, by the much praised Jeffrey Eugenides, presents a huge problem for any reader. Its narrator, a Greek-American born with ambiguous genitalia, spent her/his childhood as an (allegedly) gorgeous little girl, but on discovering at adolescence that he was genetically a boy, transformed Callie into Cal. Kristoffer Tabori does many things well, but at no point does his manly voice sound as if it were ever a pretty little girl's. Further, his Greeks don't sound Greek, and his Cal talks with the same whiny accent as his Greek-born Granny, although Cal was born in Detroit and educated at a fancy Grosse Pointe private school. Both this novel and this production fail to convince or even entertain very much. Seriously disappointing. B.G. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
In his second novel, the author of The Virgin Suicides (1993) once again proves himself to be a wildly imaginative writer, this time penning a coming-of-age tale, ranging from the 1920s in Asia Minor to the present in Berlin, about a hermaphrodite. Perhaps what is most surprising about Eugenides' offbeat but engrossing book is how he establishes, seemingly effortlessly, the credibility of his narrator: "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." So starts Cal's remarkably detailed odyssey, which began when his grandparents, who were siblings, married and vowed to keep the true nature of their relationship a secret; however, their deception comes back to haunt them in the form of their grandchild. With a sure yet light-handed touch, Eugenides skillfully bends our notions of gender as we realize, along with Cal, that although he has been raised as a girl, he is more comfortable as a boy. Although at times the novel reads like a medical text, it is also likely to hold readers in thrall with its affecting characterization of a brave and lonely soul and its vivid depiction of exactly what it means to be both male and female. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal is a wonderfully engaging narrator. . . A deeply affecting portrait of one family’s tumultuous engagement with the American twentieth century." --The New York Times

"Expansive and radiantly generous. . . Deliriously American." --The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

"A towering achievement. . . . [Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being." --Los Angeles Times Book Review (cover review)

"A big, cheeky, splendid novel. . . it goes places few narrators would dare to tread. . . lyrical and fine." --The Boston Globe

"An epic. . . This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness." --People

"Unprecedented, astounding. . . . The most reliably American story there is: A son of immigrants finally finds love after growing up feeling like a freak." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Middlesex is about a hermaphrodite in the way that Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel is about a teenage boy. . . A novel of chance, family, sex, surgery, and America, it contains multitudes." --Men’s Journal

"Wildly imaginative. . . frequently hilarious and touching." --USA Today



Review
"Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal is a wonderfully engaging narrator. . . A deeply affecting portrait of one family’s tumultuous engagement with the American twentieth century." --The New York Times

"Expansive and radiantly generous. . . Deliriously American." --The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

"A towering achievement. . . . [Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being." --Los Angeles Times Book Review (cover review)

"A big, cheeky, splendid novel. . . it goes places few narrators would dare to tread. . . lyrical and fine." --The Boston Globe

"An epic. . . This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness." --People

"Unprecedented, astounding. . . . The most reliably American story there is: A son of immigrants finally finds love after growing up feeling like a freak." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Middlesex is about a hermaphrodite in the way that Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel is about a teenage boy. . . A novel of chance, family, sex, surgery, and America, it contains multitudes." --Men’s Journal

"Wildly imaginative. . . frequently hilarious and touching." --USA Today



Review
"Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal is a wonderfully engaging narrator. . . A deeply affecting portrait of one family’s tumultuous engagement with the American twentieth century." --The New York Times

"Expansive and radiantly generous. . . Deliriously American." --The New York Times Book Review (cover review)

"A towering achievement. . . . [Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being." --Los Angeles Times Book Review (cover review)

"A big, cheeky, splendid novel. . . it goes places few narrators would dare to tread. . . lyrical and fine." --The Boston Globe

"An epic. . . This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness." --People

"Unprecedented, astounding. . . . The most reliably American story there is: A son of immigrants finally finds love after growing up feeling like a freak." --San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Middlesex is about a hermaphrodite in the way that Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel is about a teenage boy. . . A novel of chance, family, sex, surgery, and America, it contains multitudes." --Men’s Journal

"Wildly imaginative. . . frequently hilarious and touching." --USA Today



Book Description
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.



Download Description
Spanning across eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence - Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Jeffrey Eugenides kept a fairly low profile after his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, caused a stir in 1993. With Middlesex, a sprawling yet intimate novel that earns the turning of every one of its 500-plus pages, he proves that the time was very well spent. Imagine a cross between E. L. Doctorow's classic Ragtime and one of the multigenerational epics of James Michener. Better yet, don't approach this book with any preconceptions -- just have an open heart and mind plus a willingness to let a novelist who knows what he's doing break a few storytelling rules.

Raised as a girl by her second-generation Greek-American family, Calliope (now Cal) Stephanides is physiologically a hermaphrodite and is more male than female. That's not giving away much -- Cal explains it on the first page. What's remarkable is that a book can start with such a revelation and still manage to be full of surprises. Narrated by Cal, the story also shares the thoughts, feelings, and intimate details of the lives of Cal's grandparents, parents, and other family members. In this omniscient first-person mode, we get an epic family saga, a journey from 1920s Greece to 1960s Detroit to contemporary Europe -- one that leads to a remarkably satisfying conclusion. To understand anyone, Eugenides seems to be implying, we need to know not only his or her (or in this case, "his/her") inner thoughts, but also those of all the ancestors whose DNA has contributed to the mix that created him/her.

"Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times," begs Cal. But she/he has nothing to apologize for. It's exactly that willingness to take this rich and accessible story over the top that makes Eugenides' novel so complexly and wonderfully moving. Lou Harry

ANNOTATION

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Nominated for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award, Fiction.
2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Transgender.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides finds herself drawn to a classmate at her girls' school in Grosse Point, Michigan. That passion -- along with her failure to develop -- leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. The explanation for this is a rare genetic mutation -- and a guilty secret -- that have followed Callie's grandparents from the crumbling Ottoman Empire to Prohibition-era Detroit and beyond, outlasting the glory days of the Motor City, the race riots of 1967, and the family's second migration, into the foreign country known as suburbia. Thanks to the gene, Callie is part girl, part boy. And even though the gene's epic travels have ended, her own odyssey has only begun.

SYNOPSIS

Spanning across eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence--Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine - Penelope Mesic

For the first fourteen years of life, Calliope Helen Stephanides, the narrator and main character of this second novel from the author of The Virgin Suicides, is a coltish schoolgirl, the bright, coddled daughter of a hard-working Greek family who own a chain of hotdog stands in Detroit. But for Calliope, the transformations of puberty do not consist of the usual ripening of womanly curves, but rather the solid musculature, husky voice and nascent mustache of shocking, unsuspected manhood. Named for the muse of epics—of which this wonderful comic novel is surely a modern version—Calliope is the rarest form of hermaphrodite. "Like Tiresias," she explains, "I was first one thing and then the other." It is this dual viewpoint, as much as the oddity of her experiences, that prompts her to write. "I want to get it down for good: this roller coaster ride of a single gene through time. Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome!" Cal bravely declares, adding, "Sorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That's genetic too." It is in fact the first of many classical allusions. Homer called the sea "wine-dark." Landlocked Calliope, as befits her Motor City origins, mentions a "wine-dark Buick." Cal's mock-heroic announcement is the portal into so odd and yet so normal a chronicle of three generations of an American family that readers will find themselves gloating over the book's length and its consequent guarantee of extended pleasure. The story begins in the tiny Greek village of Bithynios in 1922. Perilously near the Turkish border, it is a center of silkworm cultivation. Here, Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, Calliope's grandparents, growup; and from here they flee to the port of Smyrna, where they precariously survive the sacking of the city by Ottoman troops. During their passage to the United States, the Stephanideses make a rash decision. Acting on an incestuous passion, they start their new life by declaring themselves not brother and sister but husband and wife. In their commingled genes Calliope's fate is sealed. In the old country, this would be Greek tragedy. But in the America of Eugenides' novel—the land of optimism and self-transformation—consensual incest engenders only slightly more regret than it does in Tom Jones. At one point the author describes a lustful impulse by saying, "It was her body that did it, with the cunning and silence of bodies everywhere." In these pages, human frailty is excusable. Human tyranny, however, is not. Thus Eugenides ridicules the paternalism of the Ford Corporation—which in its early years inspected workers' homes for signs of loose living, poor hygiene or similar transgressions against the American way of life—as Lefty attends compulsory training at the automobile plant. There he is forced to recite, "Do not spit on the floor of the home" and "The most advanced people are the cleanest." Similarly, the condescending doctor who torments Calliope with tests and seeks to exploit the rarity of her condition is as close as the novel comes to a villain. In other literatures and cultures, a woman who permits incestuous relations would be an object of condemnation and horror. But a clue to how lightly we are expected to regard Desdemona comes when Eugenides describes the braids emblematic of her nature: "not delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver's tail." The sudden incongruity of the last two words raises the sentence from something one might find in run-of-the-mill magical realism to true, subversive comedy. Such highly compressed, explosively sudden comparisons are Eugenides' forte. Some are charmingly written, as when Calliope's aunt Zoë sits so meekly in church that "the round gray hat she wore looked like the head of a screw fastening her to her pew." Others have the force of poetry, as when Calliope says of the freckled, red-haired schoolmate whom she secretly adores, "It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors." When Eugenides deals not in metaphor but in historical detail, he imbues facts with the same piquancy as his imagination. The 1967 Detroit riots that destroy Lefty's cozy, dumpy little restaurant, The Zebra Room, resonate with the Stephanideses' recollection of Smyrna in flames. And consider the antic boldness of making use of the Nation of Islam's Mosque Number One as the setting for the recently emigrated Desdemona's first job, teaching young black women how to make the silk for the congregants' robes. Even a great-hearted novel such as this one has patches that are marginally less satisfying. Eugenides' home turf is adolescence. Perhaps for this reason, Cal's account of his own middle age in the present day seems dim and perfunctory, a mere episode before we return to the moment when Calliope, now Cal, presents her mother with her new identity. Their wonderful brief exchange expands a singular genetic event into an inescapable human experience, one that takes place between every child impatient to embrace the future dictated by one's nature, and every parent who shrinks from the inevitable hardships that child must undergo.

Publishers Weekly

Without a doubt, this audio edition of Eugenides's long-awaited second novel (after The Virgin Suicides) represents an acme of the audiobook genre: the whole equals much more than the sum of its parts. This is simultaneously the tale of a gene passed down through three generations and the story of Calliope Stephanides, the recipient of that gene. Never quite feeling at home in her body, Callie discovered at the age of 14 that she is, in fact, genetically, if not completely anatomically, a boy. From this point on she becomes Cal, and it is Cal, the 41-year-old man, who narrates the story, dipping all the way back in history to the time of his grandparents' incestuous relationship in war-torn Turkey. Tabori's performance of the text is phenomenal. His somewhat high-register, wavering voice, reminiscent of a young Burgess Meredith, is completely convincing as both the young female Callie and the older male Cal. Not only are his interpretations of the characters astonishingly credible, but his internalization of the narrative is nothing short of amazing. Listeners will feel this exhilarating story is being told personally to them for the very first time. Additionally, the intro music at the beginning of each of the 28 sides is different, with each snippet offering a different style of music, reflecting the current timeline and mood of the story. This adds a subtle but wonderful effect. Simultaneous release with the FSG hardcover (Forecasts, July 1). (Sept.)

Library Journal

Eugenides's second novel (after The Virgin Suicides) opens "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl...in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy...in August of 1974." Thus starts the epic tale of how Calliope Stephanides is transformed into Cal. Spanning three generations and two continents, the story winds from the small Greek village of Smyrna to the smoggy, crime-riddled streets of Detroit, past historical events, and through family secrets. The author's eloquent writing captures the essence of Cal, a hermaphrodite, who sets out to discover himself by tracing the story of his family back to his grandparents. From the beginning, the reader is brought into a world rich in culture and history, as Eugenides extends his plot into forbidden territories with unique grace. His confidence in the story, combined with his sure prose, helps readers overcome their initial surprise and focus on the emotional revelation of the characters and beyond. Once again, Eugenides proves that he is not only a unique voice in modern literature but also well versed in the nature of the human heart. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/02.] - Rachel Collins, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-From the opening paragraph, in which the narrator explains that he was "born twice," first as a baby girl in 1960, then as a teenage boy in 1974, readers are aware that Calliope Stephanides is a hermaphrodite. To explain his situation, Cal starts in 1922, when his grandparents came to America. In his role as the "prefetal narrator," he tells the love story of this couple, who are brother and sister; his parents are blood relatives as well. Then he tells his own story, which is that of a female child growing up in suburban Detroit with typical adolescent concerns. Callie, as he is known then, worries because she hasn't developed breasts or started menstruating; her facial hair is blamed on her ethnicity, and she and her mother go to get waxed together. She develops a passionate crush on her best girlfriend, "the Object," and consummates it in a manner both detached and steamy. Then an accident causes Callie to find out what she's been suspecting-she's not actually a girl. The story questions what it is that makes us who we are and concludes that one's inner essence stays the same, even in light of drastic outer changes. Mostly, the novel remains a universal narrative of a girl who's happy to grow up but hates having to leave her old self behind. Readers will love watching the narrator go from Callie to Cal, and witnessing all of the life experiences that get her there.-Jamie Watson, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile

Middlesex, by the much praised Jeffrey Eugenides, presents a huge problem for any reader. Its narrator, a Greek-American born with ambiguous genitalia, spent her/his childhood as an (allegedly) gorgeous little girl, but on discovering at adolescence that he was genetically a boy, transformed Callie into Cal. Kristoffer Tabori does many things well, but at no point does his manly voice sound as if it were ever a pretty little girl's. Further, his Greeks don't sound Greek, and his Cal talks with the same whiny accent as his Greek-born Granny, although Cal was born in Detroit and educated at a fancy Grosse Pointe private school. Both this novel and this production fail to convince or even entertain very much. Seriously disappointing. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

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