Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Picador, 2002.
First the cover. Before I even read a word it frightens me. Inky black (my cancer) smoke swirls from a cigarrette-bearing person lounging with a friend. That same smoke meets up with the smoke stack of an ocean-going vessel and encircles the skyline of a city. I instantly recoil from the seductive swirls and think, “I’m gonna hate this book.”
But I don’t. It’s long (529 pages), but I’ve enjoyed every page. I can see why it won a Pulitzer Prize. It’s the story of Calliope Stephanides and the two generations that brought her into this world. It’s Greece and Germany and Grosse Point. It’s the science of genetics meeting the mother of all family secrets. Calliope is also Cal, one and the same. Girl meets Boy. Girl is Boy. Boy is Girl. Sound confusing? It isn’t. It’s poetic and sad, funny and smart. Something you just have to read for yourself. Cal will tell you the story. His story. Her story. My favorite lines:
“…German wasn’t good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn’t interrupt” (p 7).
“Filling her head with music, she escaped her body” (p 115).
“The only thing that roused her was her daily lineup of soap operas. She watched the cheating husbands and scheming wives as faithfully as ever, but she didn’t reprimand them anymore, as if she’d given up correcting the errors of the world” (p 271).
“…her application to join her husband in heaven was still working its was through a vast, celestial bureaucracy” (p 286).
BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust. Pearl mentions this book several times. First, on page 97 in the chapter “Gender Bending” then on page 141 in the chapter “Lines That Linger, Sentences That Stick.” She is referring to Middlesex‘s opening line. It’s a doozy. Finally, on page 166 in “Men Channeling Women” Middlesex is listed one last time. As you can see Jeffrey Eugenides hit a homerun with this one.
ps~ The cover makes perfect sense to me now.
~*LunaSea*~ 