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  • "In the eighteenth row my grandmother gave her critical opinion. 'It's lke the paintings in the museum,' she said. 'Just an excuse to show people with no clothes.'"

    "All of a sudden American wasn't about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was bout ... Continue

    "In the eighteenth row my grandmother gave her critical opinion. 'It's lke the paintings in the museum,' she said. 'Just an excuse to show people with no clothes.'"

    "All of a sudden American wasn't about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was bout something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!"

    "Shakes your hand while he pisses in your pocket"

    "The most widely raised type of silkworm, the larva of the Bombyx mori, no longer exists anywhere in a natural state. As my encyclopedia poignantly puts it: 'The legs of the larvae have dgenerated, and the adults do not fly'"

    

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• ― Amusaur83 said on Aug 12, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Original, interesting, intriguing, absorbing & though-provoking!!
    One of the best reads of that year.
    Loved it!!

    

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• ― Nini said on Nov 16, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • truly stunning

  • One of the most amazing books I've read - full of depth, unusual information and heart.

    

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• ― Gary said on Aug 19, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Better than "The Virgin Suicides," although Eugenides's prose can occasionally be tiresome.

    

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• ― Coilette said on Jun 14, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • My thoughts

  • This beautifully written book is more than a story of a hermaphrodite. It is a rich family history interwoven with the history of Greek immigrants, as well as a history of life in the Detroit area from the early auto industry through the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. I liked all the characters ... Continue

    This beautifully written book is more than a story of a hermaphrodite. It is a rich family history interwoven with the history of Greek immigrants, as well as a history of life in the Detroit area from the early auto industry through the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. I liked all the characters from the grandparents Desdemona and Lefty through the narrator, Cal/Callie.

    

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• ― krin5292 said on Apr 20, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • Middlesex

  • This book needs more than 4 stars.

    

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• ― Readingrat said on Jan 14, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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.

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Margin notes of this book

• JeffreyEugenidesnovelDetroit suburbsHenry FordNation of Islamfreak showindustrymulti-generationsrace riotssuburban life
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