Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides: A Place and a Condition. (1166 words)
by TheChocolateLady - written on 16.11.07 (Very useful, 125 readings)
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The opening line of "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides is "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." This intriguing conundrum is explained promptly as we are then informed of the narrator's ancient genetic mutation, in conjunction with a brief smattering of the contradictions in the speaker's life that led up to and immediately followed this astounding discovery. And that's just on the first pages of this novel. But I can assure you that the remaining 500+ pages are no less ...

unambiguously beautiful (610 words)
by melee679 - written on 19.02.04 (Very useful, 188 readings)
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You know what it's like at airports, those couple of hours in departures, shuffling aimlessly from shop to shop, hoping to magically pass the time. I always end up parting with cash in the bookstore, because somehow it's justified when you're off on holiday. This time I dithered over the lovely stacks of books, and ended up with 'Ignorance' by Kundera, 'Platform' by Houellbecq, and 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer, follows three generations of the Stephanides family, from the grandparents driven out of Asia Minor Greece to the grandchildren in Modern day America, and principally ...