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Middlesex (2002)

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
26,680622108 (4.1)935
Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.
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  1. 102
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    The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving (Othemts)
    Othemts: Multi-generational eccentric families, entrepreneurship, incest, the average made epic - yep, these books have it all!
  3. 81
    Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (_debbie_)
    _debbie_: Both are (at least partially) historical novels with strong themes of identity, coming of age, and going against the mainstream to stay true to what you feel is right. Although one is set in Victorian England and the other isn't, they both have that same feel of rich language and descriptive place.… (more)
  4. 93
    The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (bookmomo)
    bookmomo: share the same exquisite sense of setting: boring, but not terrible suburban America, second half of last century.
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  6. 51
    As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto (librorumamans, librorumamans)
    librorumamans: The connection of this book to Middlesex is Eugenides' character, Dr Luce, who appears to be modelled on Dr John Money of Johns Hopkins University. As Nature Made Him is a non-fiction account of Money's experimental (and unsuccessful) sex reassignment of David Reimer, whose botched infant circumcision left him genitally mutilated. Both books compellingly look at the complexity of gender identity.… (more)
  7. 30
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    ainsleytewce: Both are very American stories, about families in the 20th century, fighting wars, starting businesses, raising families, and both feature a teenage protagonist.
  8. 64
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    sarah-e: A character 'passes' in society - dealing with culture and identity.
  9. 10
    The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue (jacr)
    jacr: A scholarly discussion of the decline of Detroit and its race riots. People who liked Eugenides's fictional account of Detroit might be interested in this historical version.
  10. 32
    The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich (ainsleytewce)
    ainsleytewce: Both begin with immigrants who come to America at approximately the same time.
  11. 32
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    someproseandcons: Both books are family and community sagas centered around secrets, and both books are carried by a strong and compelling voice.
  12. 10
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  13. 10
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  14. 10
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  15. 00
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    paulkid: Get a little history of Detroit from the stories of the people who lived there.
  16. 22
    Intersex: A Perilous Difference by Morgan Holmes (boat-song)
    boat-song: Contains an amazing chapter on Eugenides and Middlesex, and for those interested in gender, a must read.
  17. 00
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    amberwitch: Similar topic and era
  18. 11
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(see all 31 recommendations)

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▾Member reviews
English (604)  Italian (5)  Spanish (3)  Dutch (2)  Catalan (1)  Norwegian (1)  German (1)  French (1)  Finnish (1)  Swedish (1)  Portuguese (1)  All languages (621)
date ▼ | votes
Showing 1-5 of 604 (next | show all)
I found this a long-winded, slow read and was quite disappointed given how much others loved it. ( )
  lschiff | Sep 24, 2023 |
An artfully portrayed, character driven novel that deals with the topic matter of intersex conditions respectfully, but without kid gloves. ( )
  settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 |
I read this one a while ago, and don't recall any details. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 12, 2023 |
Dire che avevo alte aspettative per questo romanzo è riduttivo. Avevo aspettative colossali per Middlesex, e non è stato nemmeno perché avevo letto recensioni entusiaste. Mi sembrava semplicemente un libro con tutte le carte in regola per piacermi da impazzire.

Forse non è neanche corretto da parte mia affermare che “avevo alte aspettative”: sarebbe più corretto dire che mi aspettavo un romanzo particolare, diverso dalla solita saga familiare. Invece, quella che mi sono trovata a leggere è esattamente una tipica storia lunga tre generazioni. Così tipica da non essere riuscita a colpirmi in maniera particolare.

Complice di questa scarsa incisività credo sia stato anche il modo in cui l'autore affronta l'ermafroditismo del protagonista. Lungo tutto il romanzo, Eugenides ci prepara al grande momento in cui Calliope passerà dall'essere una ragazza ad essere un ragazzo: quando, però, il momento arriva, questo non fa presa sulla mente del lettore e scivola via.

Per quanto mi riguarda, ho sentito la mancanza di una maggiore introspezione: da quando Calliope diventa Cal, Middlesex diventa una serie di eventi che portano velocemente alla fine del romanzo e l'ermafroditismo del protagonista sembra diventare un orpello alla storia invece del cardine intorno al quale l'intero romanzo è stato scritto. ( )
  kristi_test_02 | Jul 28, 2023 |
Middlesex is a coming of age story with a twist. The twist? Calliope Stephanides is not your typical teenager. Calliope is a male pseudohermaphrodite -- genetically male but appearing otherwise. Callie's condition goes unnoticed at birth and she's raised as a girl. Upon reaching puberty however,the male within comes to the surface both physically and emotionally. Cal's ability to see both the female and male point of view is what makes her such a strong character and narrator. Cal's ability to emphasize goes beyond just male and female. She's able to see into the hearts and minds of her ancestors and so Cal acts as the narrator to her own coming of age story, as well as her parents and grandparents. A fascinating character and a fascinating story !
( )
  kevinkevbo | Jul 14, 2023 |
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Showing 1-5 of 604 (next | show all)
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▾Published reviews
This novel repeats the stand-out achievements of The Virgin Suicides: an ability to describe the horrible in a comic voice, an unusual form of narration and an eye for bizarre detail.
added by SqueakyChu | editGuardian, Mark Lawson (Oct 5, 2002)
 
Eugenides does such a superb job of capturing the ironies and trade-offs of assimilation that Calliope's evolution into Cal doesn't feel sudden at all, but more like a transformation we've been through ourselves.
added by Shortride | editPittsburgh Post-Gazette, John Freeman (Sep 29, 2002)
 
Some of this footloose book is charming. Most of it is middling.
added by Shortride | editTime, Richard Lacayo (Sep 23, 2002)
 
His narrator is a soul who inhabits a liminal realm, a creature able to bridge the divisions that plague humanity, endowed with ''the ability to communicate between the genders, to see not with the monovision of one sex but in the stereoscope of both.'' That utopian reach makes ''Middlesex'' deliriously American; the novel's patron saint is Walt Whitman, and it has some of the shagginess of that poet's verse to go along with the exuberance. But mostly it is a colossal act of curiosity, of imagination and of love.
added by Shortride | editThe New York Times Book Review, Laura Miller (Sep 15, 2002)
 
''Middlesex'' is a novel about roots and rootlessness. (The middle-sex, middle-ethnic, middle-American DNA twists are what move Cal to Berlin; the author now lives there too.) But the writing itself is also about mixing things up, grafting flights of descriptive fancy with hunks of conversational dialogue, pausing briefly to sketch passing characters or explain a bit of a bygone world.

''The Virgin Suicides'' is all of a piece, contained within the boundaries of one neighborhood; ''Middlesex'' -- a strange Scheherazade of a book -- is all in pieces, as all big family stories are, bursting the boundaries of logic.
added by dale-in-queens | editCnn.com, Lisa Schwarzbaum (Sep 9, 2002)
 
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▾Other authors

» Add other authors (9 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Eugenides, Jeffrey—primary authorall editionsconfirmed
Bagnoli, KatiaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Nilsson, Hans-JacobTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Tabori, KristofferNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
▾Series and work relationships
▾Awards and Honors
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▾Common Knowledge
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Canonical title
Middlesex
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
2002-09-04
People/Characters
Eleutherios "Lefty" Stephanides
Desdemona Stephanides
Milton Stephanides
Theodora "Tessie" Stephanides
Calliope "Cal" Stephanides
Important places
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Berlin, Germany
Smyrna
Grosse Pointe, Michigan, USA
Petoskey, Michigan, USA
Important events
Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)
Great Fire of Smyrna (1922)
Prohibition in the United States (1929)
Detroit Riot (1967)
Related movies
Awards and honors
Pulitzer Prize (2003.1 | Fiction, 2003)
ALA Stonewall Book Award Honor Book (2003.1 | Literature, 2003)
Oprah's Book Club selection (2007)
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Shortlist (2004)
Pajiba's Best Books of the Generation (2007, No 01)
Epigraph
Dedication
For Yama, who comes from a different gene pool entirely
First words
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.
Quotations
"Don't you think it would have been easier just to stay the way you were?"
I lifted my face and looked into my mother's eyes. And I told her: "This is the way I was."
The textbook publishers would make sure to cover my face. The black box: a fig leaf in reverse, concealing identity while leaving shame exposed.
Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, the workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.

But in 1922 it was still a new thing to be a machine.
He looked up at me with no expression, blinking. That was Chapter Eleven's way. Everything went on in him internally. Inside his braincase sensations were being reviewed, evaluated, before any reaction was given. I was used to this, of course...He was quiet, blinking. There was the usual lag time while he thought.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Rushdie, Salman
Foer, Jonathan Safran
Original language
English
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC
▾References

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Wikipedia in English (2)

▾Book descriptions
Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.
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Book description
Three generations of a Greek American family find themselves plagued by a mutant gene which causes bizarre side effects in the family's teenage girls.
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Genres

Melvil Decimal System (DDC)

813.54Literature › English (North America) › American fiction › 20th Century › 1945-1999

LC Classification

PS3555.U4Language and Literature › American literature › American literature › Individual authors › 1961-

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