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Socialist Review Book Club7pm, Friday 24 September 2004 Bookmarks Bookshop
“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.” So begins Jeffrey Eugenides’
second novel, Middlesex, the story of Calliope Stephanides, who discovers
at
the age of fourteen that she is really a he. Cal traces the story of his
transformation
and the genetic condition that caused it back to his paternal
grandparents, who happen also to be brother and sister, and the Greek village In 1922, Desdemona Stephanides and her brother, Lefty, whose parents were killed in the recent war with the Turks, are living alone in their nearly abandoned village. Pulled together by isolation, sympathy, and, perhaps, fate, Lefty and Desdemona become husband and wife, and a recessive genetic condition begins its journey toward eventual expression in their grandchild Calliope. Middlesex is a story about what it means to occupy the complex and unnamed middle ground between male and female, Greek and American, past and present. 'Expansive and radiantly generous ... a colossal act of curiosity, of
imagination and of love' 'This year's most sumptuously enjoyable book ... superb' Come Along! |
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Middlesex