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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 | 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

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  • About my hometown: Detroit/Grosse Pointe. The descriptions of familiar places felt exactly right.

    

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• ― dunrie said on Oct 14, 2006 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls school, Grosse Pointe, MI, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between themalong with Callies failure to developleads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbiaback before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callies 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.Sprawling across eight decadesand one unusually awkward adolescenceJeffrey Eugenidess 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 Americas best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.

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