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Product Description A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl. In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all. The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite. Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker. Amazon.com Review "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

2010-07-23 It's not the same without grandma... I have to credit Eugenides with tackling a difficult subject; but the second half fell flat for me once the grandmother left the story, as if not only was she the strong foundation of the family, but of the book as well. However, it's obvious Eugenides is a skillful writer and he describes and dissects his characters with a deft pen. I would recommend it for that alone, if nothing else. There were moments of great pathos and of great humor, but the story for me ended halfway through the book. 2010-07-01 Amazing. I couldn't put it down. This book kept me hooked. The story is beautifully written. I practically fell in love with the narrator, and wanted to know everything about her/him. 2010-06-28 Knowledge of adolescent sex is amazingly accurate Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex was recommended to me by a young student who reads constantly, and it was only because it had won the Pulitzer Prize that I considered tackling it. These kinds of "literary" novels are either boring as hell or transcendent. Luckily, this one was the latter. Eugenides manages to convey the complex inner thought processes of Callie, who was born with amorphous genitals and is raised as a girl until puberty, when the object of his affection is a young, female classmate. Their strange romance is so well written that it reminded me of what it was like in my early to late teens to be subject to the tortures of puberty. The discovering what your body can do, vs. what it wants to do. Discovering who you are attracted to, and whether or not you can trust your instincts. This mission of self-discovery was wonderful, accurate, and the character does exactly the right thing when faced with surgical sexual reassignment. The rest of the book is less interesting, although the peek show in San Fran was hilarious. I didn't get much out of the history of Callie's grand parents and parents, although I learned a helluvalot about the Greek American mindset. Having been to Greece and knowing how they reject modernism, I have great sympathy and interest in the modern Greek psyche. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has ever known someone that was discovering their sexuality. I have a personal friend who was born a hermaphrodite, so I definitely understand the torture & difficult decisions that are forced on these people. Most people end up choosing love over friendships. That's what Callie does in this wonderful book that certainly deserved the awards that it got. 2010-06-27 Subject and Sentences are rich! I love stumbling upon modern authors who have the syntactic smarts to ruffle the feathers of your regular reader. Bought as a recommendation, I knew that at least the subject matter would be interesting, but I was not expecting to be rewarded with such a rich level of language. Freely-floating modifiers galore snare phrase after phrase of extra detail that never ceases to reward. A healthily empurpled text I would recommend to anyone! 2010-06-27 Spectacular read, if it is your taste. I can understand why some would find this book rather boring, but I absolutely loved it. The author is fantastic; I was marveling over his poetic writing for the entire book. One of the best I've ever read.