Middlesex: A Novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides
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Book Reviews of Middlesex: A Novel
Book Review: a comic epic about identity change in the new millenium
Summary: 4 Stars
Even though the surface of it seems concerned with issues of sexual identity (hermaphroditism, which goes a step beyond androginy in becoming a biological manifestation of the unisexual anxiety), in reality the deep knowledge structure of the book is concerned with national identity: Cal(lie)'s realisation of her identity as a (not very manly) man, goes together with her acceptance of her Greek heritage. Her father Milton Stephanides, who had wanted to suppress his roots, is ironically rewarded for this with a tragic (in the Greek sense of seemingly pre-determined) violent death. This seems a symbol of, in the opinion of the author, the death of the generation of World War II, the group of people who represent the old and who try to impose their mostly materialistic interpretation of American culture onto the young and new. Callie represents the new way of being human. The cultural hermaphrodite is the individual who has to cope with two contradictory influences in their identity make-up: the American and their own regional soul. This is the new type of human being that in the opinion of the author comes after everything else that has happened before. It is supposed to be the thing after post-modernism, a new type of voice (and of mode of writing) that goes back to the cultural roots of civilisation, to the classics, in order to recover the nurture of storytelling and adapt it to our contemporary experience of the world. This experience, marked by permanent conflict, seems to demand the existence of this new (wo)man, who is to find in the grim darkness of decay outside a reflection of their inner excision. But this view of the present and the near future is not necessarily gloomy. There is a lot of exhilaration which comes from the right places: the idea that the individual is free to explore their identity and come up with the power of choice and decision is not so easy to contest as it may seem; the power of the imagination, and the imagination of the self, seems to offer a myriad of possibilities for personal happiness and self-realisation. The world cannot fail but be somehow benefitted by this new way of living in it, from a conscience of personal power that has swiftly switched from the traditional, institutional centres to the centre of the individual.
The character called Chapter Eleven may owe its name to the Book of Genesis'?
Book Review: Low average
Summary: 2 Stars
Yes, everyone loves that book. It has everything to please the reader: action, tragedy, humor, and of course a bitter-sweet love-story. And it even won the Pulitzer-price so you can feel as a part of the "intellectual reader community", right!?
Well, and then the book is about everything: about Greek-Turkey conflict, first world war, second world war, Korean war, uprise of Detroit, racial segregation and discrimination, riots in Detroit, the fall of an industrial city (Detroit), Vietnam, Hippies, Fall of the Berlin wall, and of course the individual in the capitalist US-society. Oh, and everthing is described by a gender-neutral individual so that the description is not gender-biased.
It is really like that! To tell such a story you are either a genius and write a 6 book series about 20th century america, or your book is a shallow account of everything you can come up with. For "Middlesex", the latter is the case.
In wanting everything, the book attains nothing. Eugenides cannot focus, cannot distinguish between the important and the unimportant. There are so many little anecdotes in the book which do not add anything to the storyline.
The worst however is that Eugenides handling of narrative is very poor. To keep track of the complexities in the story he chooses to tell it linearly. In that way, he does not create any deeper link between the episodes and the figures. You could as well start or end the book after the first quarter, of after half, or after 3 quarters.
For example, in the first half, Desdemona has a large role. In the second half she does not appear at all and you ask yourself: where is Desdemona? What is her role in the story? How was the main character influenced by her? Then, almost at the end, when you almost have forgotten her, Eugenides writes something like: you wondered what happened to Desdemona? Well, she lied in bed the whole decade while our protagonist was developing. Ah yes, great way how to relate those figures.
Why do I give 2 stars? Well, there is the teen-love-story somewhere in the middle of the book, and I really thought it was very well written. But that is just for around 100 pages, and then it is over and the book becomes shallow and unconvincing again.
Don't read "Middlesex", go straight to Franzens "Corrections".
Book Review: "Middlesex" has entered the portals of Enduring Literature
Summary: 5 Stars
The proclivity of American critics towards big books, in particular big books about big sprawling families and intergenerational conflicts within these blood bound superstructures is never more evident than in their choices for the most prestigious annual book awards. Last year, they picked Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections". This year, they chose "Middlesex", Jeffrey Eugenides' sophomore effort and follow-up to "The Virgin Suicides". A magnificent opus truly deserving of the huge and unanimous praise heaped upon it, Eugenides' genius lies in taking a quaint and offbeat topic - hermaphroditism - and transforming it into a shimmering beautiful and incandescent metaphor for change (writ large) that must inevitably have destabilised the status quo of intergenerational relationships within immigrant families that have settled in America for decades. The Stephanides are a Greek family hailing from a little village in Asia Minor. Driven out of their homes by the terrible racial violence that broke out between the Greeks and the Turks, Lefty and Desdemona fled - incognito - to America to join their cousin. Reinventing a past to hide a terrible secret taboo that will weigh upon Desdemona for the rest of her life, they started a family and business ventures that would leave some of their highest and lowest points in their early immigrant lives.
Lefty and Desdemona got off without a scratch when they had Milton. But nobody suspected or was prepared to believe anything was wrong when puberty seemed to elude their granddaughter Calliope. While Calliope struggled valiantly with the pain of lacking a clear sexual identity, her family turned a blind eye, so when the chips were down and there was nowhere to run, Calliope did the only thing possible.
"Middlesex" is simply a great, great novel. Better than "The Corrections", which I also enjoyed and admired. There are few modern novelists who write with the generosity, lucidity and honesty of Eugenides. His prose is never bombastic or cute or coy even when dealing with an unusual subject. Calliope/Cal are so palpably real and human we never stop believing or caring for them.
If there's one American novel you have time for in 2003, let it be "Middlesex". It is an important novel and will surely enter the portals of Enduring American Literature.
Book Review: Extraordinary story!
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the challenges faced by writers is that of making old stories seem new and strange again, and to make ordinary, universal experience seem extraordinary and particular. Jeffrey Eugendies' "Middlesex" is a perfect example of this: superficially, it is the unusual, quirky tale of a hermaphrodite, and yet it captures and illuminates the commonplace trails of growing up and sexual awakening with as much tenderness, accuracy and originality as you'll find in any contemporary coming-of-age novel.This might sound irrelevant, but I came away from this book not so much admiring Jeffrey Eugenides as liking him. "The Virgin Suicides" was a lovely, sad book, but this is far more ambitious - it's a hubristic idea that could have dissolved into a shallow vehicle for cleverness in another writer's hands, and it's a credit to Eugenides' warmth and charm that this doesn't. Eugenides is more interested in character and story than in the nature/nurture question the book inevitably raises; on this, he takes a rather safe middle ground, opting for the free will and self-determination argument. While this makes the book a little less interesting in terms of ideas, it makes it a better novel.
Eugendies' greatest assets are his offbeat altruism, his generosity, his humour, and his striking imagination. He knows how to entertain a reader, and he takes care of you throughout this sizeable read, confident that he's tapping a rich vein not only with Callie's tale of gender but with the background story of a Greek family across generations and recent American history captured via the prism of Detroit. But it is with Callie's early adolescence that this book really shines, especially in Eugenides' descriptions of her love affair with the Object - here is Eugenides' best prose, fertile, supple and evocative, clearly fired by its subject, and remarkably androgynous. While the book sags in certain parts, and occasionally falters in its own high-wire act (I found it sometimes a bit hard to picture Callie the Man after Callie the adolescent girl was so real; but then, that's forgivable, considering the enormous difficulty of such an undertaking), it's these passages that illuminate just what a feat of imaginative empathy Eugendies has achieved with "Middlesex." I'd recommend it to anyone.
(...)
Book Review: Middlesex is worthy of the Pulitzer.
Summary: 5 Stars
Great writing excites me. No, better than that, it elevates me. It raises my own personal writing bar. And that is exactly what Middlesex does for me. Eugenides is a storyteller's storyteller. His story is colorful, exquisitely descriptive, haunting, humorous and tragic. And, most of all, it is intelligent. Except for my brief encounter with the movie "The Angry Inch," I know almost nothing about what it means to be a hermaphrodite, and "The Angry Inch" is too blaringly offensive to elicit any kind of empathy from me. But with "Middlesex," I find myself so empathic with the characters that I am actually entering the body of hermaphrodite Cal Stephanides and feeling the roiling emotions of what it means to be this intelligent misfit.
"Middlesex" begins with the words: "I was born twice..." And like most novels, I am mildly interested in the storyline in the beginning, although I'm aware immediately that the style of writing is new and refreshing. So the prose is what keeps me reading, and then the storyline catches on fire, and I am staying up late at night just so I can get a few more pages read of the 529 pages. I stay this way until late last night, when I read page 529, and I am sad that the story has ended. I want to email Eugenides and ask, "Then what happened?"
Add intermarrying relatives to the "family script," and you begin to understand the complexities of the multigenerational cause and effects that hermaphrodites supposedly inherit. The story begins with the marriage of Desdemona and Lefty Stephanides in Turkey and follows their immigration to Detroit, Michigan, then traces the family tree down to Calliope Stephanides, the narrator. Along the way, we get a Forest Gump look at historical Detroit. It's personal and compelling. So much so that I am looking at the back flap of the book at Eugenides' picture, wondering if he is writing an autobiographical story. So much of the story is close to the author's personal history. My thought is, how can one truly understand what it means to possess both genders in "one body" unless one has had the real experience? Of course, this is pure conjecture. So let's put it this way: If Eugenides is not a hermaphrodite himself, then his ability to portray one in this story is ingenious and, well, worthy of a Pulitzer.