Middlesex - Wild Sumac books

529 pages

English language

Published June 22, 2003

ISBN:: 978-0-7475-6162-0
Goodreads:: 234706

(1 review)

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver-s license...records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and …

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver-s license...records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic. --back cover

34 editions

Jaelyn reviewed Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Review of 'Middlesex' from 'Storygraph'

3 stars

Telling the life Cal Stephanides, an intersex person from Detroit, starting with their family history as Greek expats who fled the Turkish expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor to America. The story follows two generations before reaching Cal, describing major historical events on the way such as the Detroit race rot in 1967.

It felt to me like two great but disjointed books. One being the story of Greek emigrants and the other being the life of Cal, growing up without understanding they're intersex until a chance discovery as a teenager and an attempt to force surgery upon them. The way they're tied together feels unsatisfactory, leaving the family story without a meaningful ending and Cal's story underdeveloped (though perhaps that is inevitable either way from a cis writer?).

It is nevertheless an interesting read both as a multigenerational family tale covering period events, and as the tale of a …

Telling the life Cal Stephanides, an intersex person from Detroit, starting with their family history as Greek expats who fled the Turkish expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor to America. The story follows two generations before reaching Cal, describing major historical events on the way such as the Detroit race rot in 1967.

It felt to me like two great but disjointed books. One being the story of Greek emigrants and the other being the life of Cal, growing up without understanding they're intersex until a chance discovery as a teenager and an attempt to force surgery upon them. The way they're tied together feels unsatisfactory, leaving the family story without a meaningful ending and Cal's story underdeveloped (though perhaps that is inevitable either way from a cis writer?).

It is nevertheless an interesting read both as a multigenerational family tale covering period events, and as the tale of a misunderstood intersex child who thankfully wasn't mutilated at birth, but still had to contend with rather primitive attitudes. I would be curious to hear an intersex opinion on the book's representation.