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Middlesex: A Novel (Audio CD)
by Jeffrey Eugenides
| Category:
Hermaphrodite, Family, Novel |
| Market price: ¥ 498.00
MSL price:
¥ 458.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
The brilliance of this book emerges not from the superficial story of a hermaphrodite but from the context - historical, scientific, psychological, political, geographical - of Cal's birth and subsequent rebirth. |
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AllReviews |
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The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
"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." |
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Los Angeles Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
A towering achievement. . . . [Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being. |
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The Boston Globe (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
A big, cheeky, splendid novel. . . it goes places few narrators would dare to tread. . . lyrical and fine. |
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People (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
An epic. . . This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness. |
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Men's Journal (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
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. |
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Linda Linguvic (MSL quote), New York City
<2007-01-25 00:00>
This book won a well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003. I had heard it was about a hermaphrodite and that was a little off-putting but so many people recommended it that I had to check it out. I sure am glad I did. Middlesex is a fantastic book on several levels and I loved every word of it. There are no real surprises and I liked that. The narrator lets us know the theme right in the first sentence. But then he goes on and tells the story, and he sure did captivate me for the next 528 pages. And, best of all, it keeps getting better and better as it moves along, with the last quarter of the book even more interesting that its fine beginning.
On one level it is a family saga about a Greek American family. It starts in 1922 in a small village in Greece. This is a village that has been isolated for thousands of years in which there have been occasional marriages between close relatives. There's war and disaster and many deaths, but a young couple manages to escape and make their way to America where they settle in Detroit. We get to know them well, and we also understand that they have a family secret that is carried in their genes.
On another level, this is the story of America itself. It's about the immigrant population that built cars and opened restaurants and prospered. It's about a generation that sent their sons off to fight in WW2. It's about freedom and opportunity and dreams. It's about the Greek-American experience in particular and we're present at the christenings and funerals. We see the cars they drive, the food they eat and their hopes and dreams for their children.
But later there is urban decay. There are race riots. There is a flight to the suburbs, the peace movement, and a whole different kind of life for the grandchildren of these original immigrants. That one of the grandchildren, Calliope, is carrying a recessive gene makes the story all the more interesting. She is raised as a girl in an upscale environment. We get to know her as a person. And we get to discover, along with her, her differences. We feel her adolescent angst. We know what is happening.
We also learn all about the medical condition. It certainly was an education for me. Obviously, the author did a lot of research on the subject. All the veils are stripped away. We do understand. And then we watch the privileged Calliope run away and live on the streets, stepping into the identity of a boy named Cal.
There's a lot of psychological insight in this story. It's also a story told as an epic. And underlying it all is the ancient Greek myth of metamorphosis. The author achieved a unique and phenomenal success in making all these elements work together. This book stands alone as a small masterpiece. And I have no hesitancy whatsoever in giving it one of my highest recommendations.
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A. Ross (MSL quote), Washington, DC
<2007-01-25 00:00>
Eugenides has accomplishes the remarkable with this sprawling epic: he has crafted an entertaining multi-generational saga which may well be the Great Greek-American Novel as well as the Great Hermaphrodite Novel. And therein lies the one cottontail stumbling block for prospective readers - if you need your genres nice and separate, this may prove a frustrating read. The book is narrated from the present-day by Cal, a 41-year-old Greek-American who works in Berlin for the State Department. However, the first half of the book takes place before s/he is born, beginning around the end of World War I in a small village near Bursa, in what was then Greece.
It opens with Cal's grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona, the former an aficionado of the big city vices of Bursa eager to join the modern world, the latter a romantic beauty who runs the family silkworm business. The placid pace of the dusty village is brought to life and the reader is immediately drawn into the duo's life. The Greco-Turkish War is the catalyst for their flight to Smyrna (present day Izmir, Turkey) in 1922, where they are witness to the massacre and torching of the city as it was taken by Turkish forces. Like so many others, they make their way to America, and eventually Detroit, where a relative already lives. Prohibition-era Detroit comes alive in Eugenides's hands, as the immigrant family goes through the familiar struggles to realize the American Dream. There is plenty of excellent atmosphere and detail as Lefty works at a Ford plant and then later with a bootlegger bringing booze over from Canada. Meanwhile, Desdemona works for the nascent Nation of Islam, teaching the sect's women how to raise silkworms and secretly listening to the rantings of its founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad.
We stay with the family through the '30s and '40s, as they open a diner and raise a son named Milton. The focus shifts to him, as he fights in World War II and wins the hear of a good local Greek girl. It is Milt and Tessie who give birth to narrator Cal in 1960 (and previously, to her annoying brother, whose foreshadowing name of Chapter 11 becomes clear toward the end of the book). Only they don't give birth to Cal, they give birth to Calliope, who, through the ineptitude of the family doctor, remains an undetected hermaphrodite until s/he is 14. These early years of her life prove quite eventful, as the family embarks on a quintessentially American migration to the suburbs, and Milt manages to install the family in a weird modern house in ritzy Gross Pointe. As Calliope grows older and enters the demimonde of a private all-girls school, her "difference" starts to become more apparent - at least to her. At the heart of this is a fascination with a radiant beauty in her class who eventually becomes her best friend and more. She struggles to keep her secret until an accident and visit to the emergency room start to unravel everything. Before long the family is in New York in the offices of a renown sexual identity expert, which is the catalyst for her momentous decision to live as a male.
Eugenides does an astonishing job of presenting a rather baroque and bizarre story in comfortable prose, all while creating a wonderful cast of characters. From major to minor roles, almost every single person comes alive on the page, as does every setting. From small Greek village to pre-war Detroit to the '67 riots to the upscale suburbs and even seedy '70s San Francisco, every place feels real. Even more impressively, he gives each of the three generations it's own space to breath and treats each of the three main love stories with equal care. The one area that doesn't work so well is the present-day one occupied by the narrator. It's appears so little that there's no opportunity to get any sense of Berlin, and the budding relationship with an Asian artist is far too hastily done to be satisfying, especially at the end of such an engaging saga. But this is a minor flaw in what is otherwise a masterpiece of storytelling, characterization, and rich themes. It's also quite funny in many places, quite tragic in others, and has one of the best opening lines I've come across. A rich and rewarding read.
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Tracy L.(MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
I'm not sure there's anything more I can add to the reviews already written, except to say I thought this was a wonderful book and I regret that it took me so long to read it. I had by-passed this book many times thinking I would not like the subject matter, but I couldn't have been more wrong.
I will say that, like some other reviewers, I felt the last 100 pages were a little lacking and seemed to end the story a bit to quickly. It's as if another author wrote these pages. That's not to say they were not enjoyable to read, just different from the rest of the book. As far as this being a "slow" read, I think otherwise. I would have loved to have read more, especially about Cal's teenage/college years.
This book was definetly deserving of the Pulitzer. An excellent story. |
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Aleksandra Nita-Lazar (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
"Middlesex" was probably one of the best books I read in 2004. Incidentally, just after reading it, I happened to hear the news of a sex change by an acquaintance (after a long, painful struggle) and somehow this book led me to understand it better.
But aside from the main protagonist being suspended between sexes, it is a powerful immigrant epic tale of the Greek family Stephanides, as well as, however unusual, a "coming of age" story. The move of the grandparents to Detroit, surviving the crisis and prohibition, struggle to achieve the better status (especially moving description of going through the home purchase), the extended family ties (explaining the genetics leading to the fate of Calliope), are told in retrospective, mixed with Callie's life experiences and problems with his own sexuality. Trying to be a good girl is never easy, especially when you are not a girl at all... (it is not a spoiler, mind you, because Cal's double identity is revealed in the first sentence of this novel). The secret of the family and Calliope's real sex are revealed simultaneously, and from then Cal can take his life into his own hands...which is not necessarily the best idea at the beginning, leading him to some strange adventures, but he ends up OK.
Jeffrey Eugenides has shown again his talent to tell a remarkable story, well plotted, very interesting and of good proportions. It is completely different from "The Virgin Suicides" another masterpiece, but bears an obvious blueprint of the author. Truly original. The Pulitzer Prize in this case is honestly earned.
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Paul LaRosa (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-25 00:00>
As I picked up this book and turned it over in the bookstore to read the summary on the back cover, the woman who had recommended it to me said: "Don't read that. You'll never buy it. Just read the book and you'll see." She was so right. I never would have read a book about a hermaphrodite but it would have been my loss. This novel is rich and fascinating and it's no wonder it won the Pulizter Prize. The characters are wonderful and complex and the story - while fantastic - had the ring of truth. I have no doubt that, in some form, this book has a basis in reality for some people. I learned a lot from reading this book and I think, if you have an open mind, you will too. Strongly recommended and skip the summary. Just read it.
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1 2 | Total 2 pages 15 items |
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