Extraordinary !!!

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.

If you like conspiracy books Here are a few. Having read the TOP books in the Government Cover-up Genre; "Unconventional Flying Objects" (NASA UFO Investigator for 30 years) by the scientist Dr. Paul Hill; my FAVORITE is "Alien Rapture" by Brad Steiger and Edgar Fouche (Top Secret Black Programs Insider) - (Great fiction-soon to be a movie); "Alien Agenda" by the best selling author of 'Crossfire' Jim Marrs (Best reference on UFOlogy); and "The Day After Roswell," by Colonel Corso - I'd say these books are a MUST READ also!

An ambitious undertaking with outstanding results

How to describe this sweeping epic, this amazing journey of the girl who became a boy? Cal Stephanides, the girl in question, was never really a girl'she was merely misdiagnosed at birth. We follow her life from birth to middle-age, as well as the journey of her conception. And to understand the events leading up to that, Eugenides treats us to the incestuous history of the Stephanides clan, spanning from Greece at the beginning of the 20th century to modern-day San Francisco and Detroit.

Such an elaborate story would seem a daunting read, and I did initially find that to be the case; the first hundred or so pages were a little taxing to get through, especially deciphering the Greek tangle of familial relations. But I'm glad I stuck it out because this was such an absorbing tale, told with grace and a surprising amount of wit. The characters are thoroughly developed (except, perhaps, for modern day Cal, who I would've liked to hear a little more about), and Eugenides moves them deftly through the decades'through many major events in American history like the Depression and the race riots in Detroit.

His descriptions of the emotional angst Cal endures throughout a sexually ambiguous adolescence and the subsequent discovery of his biology are SO well done. I was also amazed by the detailed history of hermaphrodites Eugenides includes. Really, I can't express my awe enough for this book.

A bit of Greek to me

There were lots of interesting moments but nothing much deep nor writing style very clever to keep me involved. Plus I think the author took a couple of impossible short cuts. Perhaps my opinion is tainted by dissapointment with an event that we never get to see to its fruition--the hero's first full-blossomed romantic relationship. To me it was good, basic reading but nothing special.