Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
by Jeffrey Eugenides
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Book Reviews of Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
Book Review: Now **THIS** is Literature.
Summary: 5 Stars
What an absolutely stunning book.
Truthfully now, this is not the kind of book I would glance at on the racks and say "Hmmm... a book about a Hermaphrodite. I must read it!" No, I would normally pass it by and in doing so would miss out on an incredible literary experience.
A friend at work heard me b1tch1ing and moaning about the larceny known as "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" that had wasted so much of my time and and she said "I've got a book for you!" and handed me this. I am so glad she did.
Where Shakespeare and Dickens are considered to be masters of English prose, Eugenides will one day, I'm sure, be considered master of "American" prose. His language and style of writing are like nothing I have encountered so far. This is writing that soared through my soul and spoke to my spirit as an equal. He takes that ridiculously over-used term of "magic realism" and stands it on it's head. THIS is what that phrase was meant to be, though it will never be used to describe this book. In my day, we used to call it "poetic license."
This book reads like an autobiography of several different generations written from the point of view of one magical individual. Did that sentence make sense? It won't, until you read this book.
I loved every single character in this book, even the ones with the flaws. Eugenides has a grasp on human nature that few writers can hope to attain. It is equal parts hope, despair, tragedy and triumph; the author makes you care about them all. This is a rare insight into human nature that I wish more of us could attain.
Simply fascinating.
Based on this, I am going to definitely read "The Virgin Suicides," another book which I probably would have passed over.
Don't make that mistake with this one.
Book Review: Read with an open mind - it's not what you think!
Summary: 4 Stars
I was assigned to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides in my English Literature class this semester (spring 2008). I was rather apprehensive because I knew it was going to be about a controversial subject, or so I thought. My son had read it a few years ago and told me to read it with an open mind, so I did.
Of course, there were times when you had to keep your emotions on the surface and not think too deeply about certain situations, but on the whole I found it to be an informative and enlightening text. Believe it or not, I was not familiar with what a hermaphrodite is even though I am a 53 year old mother of three. (I am a non-traditional student.)
The narration was very creative and enjoyable to read. The history and experiences of the three generations of the Stephanides family was intriguing and interesting.
Reading about Callie's feelings as her life evolved from childhood, through her/his teens, and then into his adulthood gave me a new respect and compassion for individuals who have to deal with similar situations where they are not part of the mainstream where gender is concerned. As a person realizes that they are different, it is very painful and traumatizing for them to undergo the changes they have to in order to survive both emotionally and physically. As ignorant (meaning not properly educated) individuals, we tend to stereotype these people and we can be very cruel to them. What they really need is for us to try to understand and accept them. What if something like this would have happened to you or me? Is this something we could have changed? It certainly isn't a conscious choice that is being made in these people's lives. So read Middlesex with an open mind and enjoy the story. It is a good read and Callie will find a place in your heart!
Book Review: TEDIOUS
Summary: 2 Stars
I didn't like this book. I'm a marathon reader; if I like a book, I'm finished with it in 48-72 hours. This book took me 3 weeks to read. I found the book tedious. The "writer" (the fictional 40 year old hermaphrodite) went on ad nauseum about the grandparents' life story(incestuous at that), revealing intimate detail (of which I found incredulous the "writer" could have ever been privy) in a lame attempt to seemingly justify the relationship, yet is oddly vague about his own parents' relationship in comparison (because they weren't related) and even emotionally distant from them, and never even explains why his/her own sibling is called "Chapter Eleven". The "writer" goes on to describe his/her sexual relationship with a close friend with less detail than that which he hadn't even witnessed between the grandparents and repeatedly refers to this love interest as "the Object." The "writer" spends nearly half the book telling his grandparents' story with entirely too much insignificant history about Detroit and the grandmother's job at a silk factory (leading up to an "insignificant shocker" of a resurrected character). Yet, denies us nearly 20 years of his life after deciding to live as a man forever-- as if we're supposed to believe it was an uneventful metamorphosis once he was about 17? I felt the first half of the book tried too hard to explain away the genetic mututation he would later suffer, the middle of the book was filled with fluff to just make the story longer, and the latter part of the book was rushed and left me wondering what the hell just happened. I felt cheated. I expected more about this hermaphrodites life, not his grandparents' life. I really hated it. This is the second book from Oprah's List I've read (and hated), the first being "A Million Pieces". I'm done with her suggestions.Book Review: Should Have Been a Trilogy
Summary: 3 Stars
Eugenides creates a fascinating back story for his main character that stretches over three generations. In fact, he does such an excellent job, that our expectations are high by the time we get to the life out narrator. Eugenides does such a good job of exploring the psychological workings that explain how two people leave the Old Country as brother and sister and arrive in America as husband and wife that it's unfortunate that his treatment of Calliope's coming to terms with her gender identity is so cursory by comparison.
The books reads as if Eugenides had a self-imposed page limit, got to the end, and only had a hundred pages left to give to Calliope's story.
A few additional problems: Eugenides employs an omniscient first-person narrative. Okay, okay, I know its just a piece of fiction, but it was distracting having the narrator not only narrate the external events of her grandparents' youth but also the internal world of her grandparents' thoughts and motives.
Also, Eugenides has Calliope narrate the story in the past tense. But when he wants to make sure we are really paying attention and wants us to feel the urgency of the events that were unfolding, Eugenides would switch to the present tense. A little sophomoric for a Pulitzer-prize-winning book.
Just when he has us genuinely caring for and rooting for Calliope, Eugenides spends four pages describing a slow-speed car chase that belongs in a completely different book. This brilliant start of a book degenerated into platitudes, flattened out characters, and just plain silliness.
Eugenides would have down better to have broken this multi-generational story into a trilogy. Perhaps then he would have been freed up to give Calliope's story the pages she deserved.
Book Review: Interesting, but this novel falls short...
Summary: 3 Stars
Honestly, when I heard what the novel was about, I thought that was daring, and into new ground. Recently, I had a chance to read it and found it kinda epic, but falling short on the most critical aspect which is the narrator of indeterminate gender Callie/Cal. This is important to me as I once knew of someone with this condition. I met her as an 18 year old blonde haired, blue eyed beautiful young lady. Somehow, she inhereted the same defect on chromosome 5 which results in someone appearing to be a sexually normal female, until they hit puberty when their testes try to drop and a visit to a doctor confirms that she is in fact; a he.
I am still haunted by some of the things this person told me, and I remain sympathetic to anyone with this condition, which is actually more common than most people realize. It happens in about 1 in 10,000 births. You see, the human zygote on the basis of our evolutionary heredity, is a female, and needs certain things to occur at the genetic level in order to create a sexually normal male. Many things can go wrong here during development, and the result is that in America, there are between 100,000 and 200,000 people who are sexually dimorphic due to some kind of genetic error. Sadly, they live quiet lives of desperation and rarely reveal who or what they are for the fear or stigma that they would end up with.
This is where the novel lets people down. I think the emotional aspect of having to hide this condition from everyone, and the experience of being a man, trapped in a woman's body wasn't explored enough. The author did do good research though in describing the condition which isn't easy given its complex nature. But the book is a good read. I enjoyed the style which had some nice easy passages and one-liners.