Rating: 
Summary: Rich and funny
Review: This is a big sweeping epic that also seems full of small touching moments. To call it "the book about the hermaphrodite" as so many people do is to sell it short, to narrow everything this book is really about, such as family, history, love, and fate. Funny and moving, this one kept me turning pages until very late at night. One of those rare books these days that seems worthy of all its accolades.
Rating:
Summary: Middlesex : A Novel
Review: Adult/High School-From the opening paragraph, in which the narrator explains that he was "born twice," first as a baby girl in 1960, then as a teenage boy in 1974, readers are aware that Calliope Stephanides is a hermaphrodite. To explain his situation, Cal starts in 1922, when his grandparents came to America. In his role as the "prefetal narrator," he tells the love story of this couple, who are brother and sister; his parents are blood relatives as well. Then he tells his own story, which is that of a female child growing up in suburban Detroit with typical adolescent concerns. Callie, as he is known then, worries because she hasn't developed breasts or started menstruating; her facial hair is blamed on her ethnicity, and she and her mother go to get waxed together. She develops a passionate crush on her best girlfriend, "the Object," and consummates it in a manner both detached and steamy. Then an accident causes Callie to find out what she's been suspecting-she's not actually a girl. The story questions what it is that makes us who we are and concludes that one's inner essence stays the same, even in light of drastic outer changes. Mostly, the novel remains a universal narrative of a girl who's happy to grow up but hates having to leave her old self behind. Readers will love watching the narrator go from Callie to Cal, and witnessing all of the life experiences that get her there.-
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing, not at all memorable...
Review: I haven't read Eugenides' first novel, and bought this one partly because it won the Pulitzer (surprising to me, after I read it..!), and partly because it was about Greek immigrants/Greek-Americans (I married a Greek-Canadian, my sister married a Greek from Athens). I know I'm going to be a minority opinion here, but I just didn't find the book special or touching or something that left me with much to think about. Nor was the writing out of the ordinary, although it's readable enough (and yet I'll readily admit that I found parts of it boring, felt it went on too much about some episodes). I like long novels when they merit the length, but this one didn't seem to, to me.Also, something that bothered me throughout the book was the 41 year old Cal, who tries to be so witty, but just wasn't. In fact, I didn't like the narrator, which was a problem. We also learn little about Cal between the ages of 14 and his present-day 41, and I couldn't put the two Cals together...why today is he STILL so afraid of intimacy? Supposedly, Cal had come to peace with his identity in his 'coming-of-age' story here. In the beginning I thought it would be interesting to read about a hermaphrodite, but I quickly tired of it, and after finishing the book, I felt I still didn't understand enough about it, still wondered why Cal hadn't wanted to have surgery, especially to become a 'real' male. I did enjoy the first part of the book, especially the parts in Smyrna, and the first generation of Desdemona and Lefty (I wish it had ended with their story, though...or at least at the end of Book Two). I thought about passing this book onto my sister, because of the Greek-American thread, but knew she wouldn't find that part interesting enough, either. Mostly, I was left feeling detached and distanced from the characters, just not caring very much what happened to Cal, especially. Am sorry I don't feel the way most of the rest of you do--I do love good writing! But I'm going to sell the book and hope someone else will like it better than I did. I'm dickering between giving this book 3 stars (the way I really feel about it) and 4 stars (because it wasn't a 'bad' book, was certainly ambitious in structure and plotting...guess I'll go with my first instincts).
Rating:
Summary: on my list of ALL TIME FAVORITES
Review: extremely captivating story of a greek family that immigrates to the US. COMICAL. Bittersweet. This book has great movie potential. IT is long, but worth it! Read it, you will enjoy it. Definetly worthy of it's pulitzer prize!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After a great beginning where the storytelling starts off like a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this novel disintegrates into a cheap sex tale. Skip the ending and read the beginning. Much more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: Greek Love
Review: I wasn't enthusiastic about reading this book. I'd found "Virgin Suicides" good but slight and rather depressing. The blurb led me to think it it might crude pornography about a transvestite, like "Myra Breckenbridge" (not that I don't think Vidal is great) and finally I was put off by learning that it was a panorama of twentieth history - when I want history I read history books.
Anyway it found its way into my house the way books do, and I did not put it down after I'd started. Some of the quotations in the trade reviews give an idea of the quality of the writing. Such a commonplace event as taking the bus through the Lincoln Tunnel is magnificiently done "...through the long yellow-lit dizzy tunnel that led to New Jersey. Going underground through the rock, with the filthy river bottom above us, and fish swimming in the black water on the other side of the curving tiles."
The Detroit ambience is terrific, and the characteristics of each city, Smyrna, Bursa, San Francisco, New York and Berlin are deftly nailed. The history lesson is not just about the events, but is subtle and insightful about the changes in sexual mores from nineteenth centtury Turkey to 21st century Germany.
The medical details are accurate. (...) The bizarre endocrinologist at New York Hospital is based on the Johns Hopkins psychologist skewered in "As Nature Made Him."
Rating:
Summary: Okay
Review: The writing was great. The beginning is a great story about the main character's grandparents, but then somewhere in the middle it starts to slip because the main character's story is just sort of boring and all over the place. Two-thirds through the book I had to force myself to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: pulitzer prize??
Review: After hearing about this book and seeing how many people absoultely loved it, i was expecting an outstanding story. My expectations were not lived up to. The beginning of this book was so slow and I don't mean just the beginning, it didn't get interesting until about halfway throught the book. Although it is a good story, it should have been about 200 pages shorter in my opinion because the author gives too many details about the main characters history and not enough about her. I will give it credit because it was a lot different than anything I have ever read and Jerrey Eugenides is a great author. I also gained a new appreciation for hemoprodites through reading this book. If you are looking for a book that is like The Virgin Suicides, do not get this book. It is not as good as his first story and it isn't really anything like it.
Rating:
Summary: My Big Fat Greek Page-Turner
Review: The panorama of history covered by Eugenides is truly amazing. I was charmed by the details, amused by the references to history (Forrest Gump style, but with more bite), and thoroughly taken in by the plot. I loved the lack of resolution at the end; Cal/Callie's story is real rather than fairy tale, and problems don't always come together neatly. Most importantly, however, I really enjoyed the depth and roundness of the characters -- I felt I was spending time with people in my own neighborhood (which is remarkable when one looks at the basic premise of the novel.) If you like books that manage to be bizarre and familiar at the same time, this is the book for you!
Rating:
Summary: My favourite Bildungsroman
Review: I'm not often a fan of books that record people's coming of age so I tried to steer clear of Middlesex for a while. When I was finally convinced to read it, I was in for a pleasant surprise. Afterall, when was the last time you read a novel where the protagonist was a hermaphrodite? I liked how it mixed history into the narrative as it allowed the reader to think of how an immigrant family may interpret American race relations. I also appreciated the ending which saw Cal performing a traditional Greek custom that affirmed her coming to grips with her second life - and tied in nicely with the periodic episodes of Cal's contemporary world in Berlin.
|
