Picador Middlesex

A tedious and boring story that takes 400 pages to get to what was said in the opening sentence. Written by the protagonist narrator in the 1st person singular and plural, and in the present tense throughout, this approach was both irritating and confusing as the novel spans around 60 years, and flip-flops around in time and place. Particularly irritating are the little asides across time (e.g. …....and in the time it takes them to go upstairs we will return to………. followed by half a page of irrelevant ramblings (about the past or future written in the present tense). It may be literary (daaaarling!), but it is so pretentious.The core subject matter is complex but as a consequence of the literary style I couldn’t empathise with the narrator’s character who is struggling with his/her gender and sexuality.

I read Middlesex with a lot of expectations. Not only was I waiting for Calliope's metamorphosis into Cal, the most-trailed transformation of any book I can remember, but I was hoping even more for the equally-trailed emergence of a Great American Novel. And while, after a lot of teasing, the author delivered on the first, for the second I was to wait in vain.The form of the novel is set very early on, after only a few chapters. There is a teaser for Calliope, for her birth and for her transformation, and then we're following the lives of her grandparents many decades before she's born. And so this pattern continues for most of the book. Eventually it becomes clear that, except in the very obvious way, this is not a novel of transformations at all; the short teasers and the long accounts of her family's doings repeat in cycles; the inter-generational scope emphasises repetition, constancy, continuity. The author's decision to have the adult Calliope as an omniscient narrator fits with his desire to tell a story, but tends to work against any theme of self-discovery. It's hard for Calliope-the-protagonist to lead the reader on a journey into her unfolding identity when Cal-the-narrator repeatedly flaunts the fact that he knows every twist and turn already.Not only is the novel not really about transformation, in some ways it isn't even about Calliope at all. It seems the author's intention was to write an epic narrative, full of the affairs of a cast of characters, and set in times and places close to his heart. Although we meet many people, we find out very little about them apart from their doings. Milton becomes a stereotype; Tessie fades into nothingness. When Calliope discovers the true nature of her body, bizarrely the narrative becomes less personal, full instead of medical details. Is Cal-the-narrator deliberately retreating into the realm of facts at this most deeply confusing and sensitive stage of his story, or is it simply that the author isn't interested in portraying how Calliope felt? When at last the end was reached I felt I knew little more about Cal that I did at the start. When he remarks on p520 that "I remain in essential ways Tessie's daughter," I had no idea what those ways might be, beyond getting their hair done together.So it seems this is not a story of transformation, or of self-discovery, or of people. It is simply a story. This impression was driven home when, as the end neared, the most ludicrous character development appeared out of nowhere, simply to bring all the plot strands to a satisfying climax. Pulitzer Prize? Don't make me laugh!Then why 2 stars and not 1? The story is indeed well-told, if you just want a story, and some of the writing is appealingly lyrical. It's just a shame there wasn't more to it.

I was recommended to this book by a friend whose reading I often admire. The book has an interesting premise so I thought I'd try it. I don't read much American literature so I'm always keen to get new ideas.The novel was first published in 2002, it is 530 pages of fairly small type, split into four sections then each of them further subdivided into several chapters.I plodded my way through it but was dragged down by the huge amounts of unnecessary detail which really didn't add enough to the story. The story itself was interesting but drowned by too many distractions, it should have been handled much more sensitively which would have made the book more compelling.

This is, without a doubt, one of the most achingly beautiful books I have ever read. The prose was absolutely stunning (I have underlined countless sections); the descriptions were nothing short of magic and the author balances perfectly between comedy and tragedy. The whole novel felt tangibly real, as if I were reading the inner thoughts of the author himself. As cliched as it may sound, this novel really touched me and made me question where we come from and what exactly makes up who we are. Thought-provoking, devastating, and beautiful. I can't wait to read it again.

This really was a deserving winner of the Pulitzer prize. One of the best novels I have ever read, Eugenides should be proud of this accomplished piece of work which is very well crafted (and probably should be taking 9 years to write). The book certainly read like the best sort of autobiography,a believable one, all this from a non-autobiographic novel by a non-intersex person. Thoroughly researched with some embellishments on the historical side, yet strong development of the issues of gender identity, sexology etc. Makes you want to read the  The Virgin Suicides  because if that is half a good as this then it will be a cracking good read. The Virgin Suicides