Book 4: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Book 4: Middlesex.
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002.
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-age, Family Saga.
Other Details: 560 pages. Bloomsbury's 21 Great Reads for the 21st Century edition.
"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."
This opening line of Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning second novel hooked me immediately. Calliope (Cal) Stephanides is born a hermaphrodite but due to an old-fashioned, half-blind doctor this is not realised at birth and he is raised as a girl until the age of fourteen. Calliope, the muse of epic and heroic poetry, is a fitting name for the narrator and protagonist of this epic novel that traces the story of three generations of the Stephanides family, who flee in 1922 from a small Greek village in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War to Detroit, Michigan where they seek the American Dream.
Callie is one of those characters whose voice comes to life so fully on the page that it can be easy to feel that this is a memoir and not a work of fiction. It is a stunning novel where comedy and tragedy mingle amongst a cast of colourful and memorable characters. Identity is a key theme, not only Callie's identity first as a girl and later as a teenage boy and man, but the broader issues of gender identity and cultural influences. Its rich backdrop of the events and social changes within the USA over the eight decades is also compelling making it one of those books bound to be identified as a 'Great American Novel'.
I found it a superb read that engaged my attention throughout and that I was rather sad to come to the end of. It certainly deserves the accolades it has received and is a novel I would whole heartily recommend.
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002.
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-age, Family Saga.
Other Details: 560 pages. Bloomsbury's 21 Great Reads for the 21st Century edition.
"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."
This opening line of Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning second novel hooked me immediately. Calliope (Cal) Stephanides is born a hermaphrodite but due to an old-fashioned, half-blind doctor this is not realised at birth and he is raised as a girl until the age of fourteen. Calliope, the muse of epic and heroic poetry, is a fitting name for the narrator and protagonist of this epic novel that traces the story of three generations of the Stephanides family, who flee in 1922 from a small Greek village in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War to Detroit, Michigan where they seek the American Dream.
Callie is one of those characters whose voice comes to life so fully on the page that it can be easy to feel that this is a memoir and not a work of fiction. It is a stunning novel where comedy and tragedy mingle amongst a cast of colourful and memorable characters. Identity is a key theme, not only Callie's identity first as a girl and later as a teenage boy and man, but the broader issues of gender identity and cultural influences. Its rich backdrop of the events and social changes within the USA over the eight decades is also compelling making it one of those books bound to be identified as a 'Great American Novel'.
I found it a superb read that engaged my attention throughout and that I was rather sad to come to the end of. It certainly deserves the accolades it has received and is a novel I would whole heartily recommend.