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"Cal" Stephanides recounts his rich family history, beginning with his grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty (secretly siblings), as they leave Greece in the 1920s and settle in Detroit. By the time Calliope is born in 1960, his parents are upper middle-class Greek Americans, but when he is 14 they discover that Calliope is actually a hermaphrodite. Taking the name "Cal," he runs away, finally finding a home in a San Francisco burlesque show. Jeffrey Eugenides's epic novel, like its main character, is a wonderful hybrid creature that perfectly captures three distinctly American stories: the immigrant tale, life in the 1960s suburban world, and finally the gender-bending and identity-altering situations that we associate with the beginning of the 21st century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2003, MIDDLESEX became both a literary and a commercial success--a success further bolstered by its selection for the Oprah Book Club in 2007.
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"[L]et me shake Eugenides's hand and say that MIDDLESEX contains scenes that are as wonderful as written prose can get, and these passages have nothing to do with askew genitalia....MIDDLESEX begins as a neo-Doctorow Depression-era novel, then becomes a Son of John Irving 1950s novel, before ending as a kind of VIRGIN SUICIDES redux." - Barbara D. VanSlyck (Bookforum, Fall 2002)
"[W]hile some of the odds and ends Eugenides tosses into the mix...don't quite integrate, far more often than not the novel feels rich with treats, including some handsome writing....[T]he 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." - Lucy Creevey (New York Times Book Review, 9/15/02)
"MIDDLESEX is consistently whimsical in its scene-setting and use of language, but despite its vaudeville exchanges and niftily isolated punch lines, it's rarely out-and-out funny....[I]ts two halves [are] at odds, each interesting at times but neither truly satisfying, despite Eugenides's prodigious talent." - Donald N. Link (Atlantic Monthly, 9/1/02)
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- Average review for this item:
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"Great story!!!! I like how it bounced back between the past and the present. Having both stories made the book that much more enriching."
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"While it took me awhile to get into, I liked it by the time I finished it. While the first 3/4 of the book was an interesting story, it was the end that was really interesting, the life of the main character."
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"A thought-provoking page-turner with an application to real-world issues."
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"Rates very highly on the list of recent books, hermaphrodite or not, as well."
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"Fantastic read, very interesting and well written"
1-5 of 59 | 
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