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Middlesex
Average Customer Review : 4.5/5 based on 859 reviews
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List Price : $17.95
Price : $3.29
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Editorial Reviews
"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
Spotlight Reviews
amazing! (2008-12-14)
Customer Review : 5
this book is just amazing in creativity and style. Story of many generations and untold family secrets.
Epic and Fabulous! (2008-12-13)
Customer Review : 5
I couldn't put this book down...it's been a while since I've read such an epic and interesting novel. I highly recommend this book.
Just OK (2008-12-10)
Customer Review : 3
This book was just OK, felt sort of "put on" at times, but it was a nice quick read. Recommended for light reading material in between denser books.
A Hellenistic Forrest Gump (2008-11-27)
Customer Review : 1
In case people think the comparison is meant as a compliment, it's not. This book had the same annoying way of coming up with coincidences that put people in the middle of "supposedly" historical occurrences. Just as I couldn't finish watching the movie, I couldn't finish reading this book. The characters and events were bland, and the magical realism didn't work.
I couldn't understand why this book is so popular until I started reading the reviews and found out that it's an Oprah's Book Club selection. The copy I have doesn't have her logo. The logo is for me is an automatic indication that a book is going to be cheesy and poorly written.
If you want to read excellent Greek tragedies about an incestuous relationship and its result, I suggest reading "Oedipus" and "Antigone" by Sophocles.
DIsappointing (2008-11-25)
Customer Review : 3
I purchased the book because of the Big O stamp of approval and found myself struggling to get through it.The history was somewhat interesting but the characters never seemed real to me, or maybe not compelling. I left it at the vacation rental, maybe someone else will enjoy it but I wont takes Oprah's recommendations so seriously now.
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