“Middlesex”
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Published: June 2007
ISBN: 0312427735

(Updated: June 30, 2007.)

From the Publisher…

The first words of Jeffrey Eugenides’ exuberant and capacious novel Middlesex take us right to the heart of its unique narrator: “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.”

I am indeed a fan of Oprah Winfrey and I did pick this book up because of her book club. And, for once, I am/was in synch with the current selection :o)

I had a tough time getting into the book initially. I’m still not sure why but for the first quarter of the book I had to think about which book I was going back to read. But… by the end I was definitely “in” and couldn’t wait to find out the next things in the characters’ lives. Now that I’m out, I am left with what? A sense of upliftment that I know links back to having read this work.

It is an amazingly lovingly written novel. It isn’t mushy or gushy. It simply “is”. And the “lovingly” part comes through, I think, the fact that the main character doesn’t expect the worst. Ever. S/he doesn’t know to expect the best and/but s/he never learned to expect the worst. So, as we discover the paths of life that lead to this telling, we discover Cal/lie. S/he is great. And, given that it is her/his telling, the people making up her life are as well. That is the uplifting part. Lives are. We all make up each other. And sometimes we do this “just right”.

Beyond the story, I found Mr. Eugenides writing a little inconsistent. Maybe that was why I had a tough time getting into it at first. There were asides and tangents that didn’t fit Callie but these “details” spiced the telling beautifully once into her/his own lifetime.

On the whole, I give this a four out of five hearts on my scale and sense that this might rise over time.