Middlesex: A Novel

Middlesex: A Novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex: A Novel
List Price: $27.00
Our Price: $18.89
You Save: $8.11 (30%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-04
ISBN: 0374199698
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary of Middlesex: A Novel

A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.

The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.

Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.

"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." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.

Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." ? I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.

When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons

Literary Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Literary Books
Island (Perennial Classics) ImageIsland (Perennial Classics)
by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops: $14.99
Angels ImageAngels
by Marian Keyes
William Morrow; Published: 2002-05-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.18
Price in other shops: $24.95
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn ImageA Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.81
Price in other shops: $23.99
The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation ImageThe Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation
by Paulo Coelho
Harper; Published: 2006-07-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops: $24.95
Boonville: A Novel ImageBoonville: A Novel
by Robert Mailer Anderson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops: $12.99
Caramelo ImageCaramelo
by Sandra Cisneros
HarperAudio; Published: 2002-10-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops: $39.95
Headhunter ImageHeadhunter
by Timothy Findley
PERENNIAL PUBLICATIONS; Paperback; Book
The Crimson Petal And The White ImageThe Crimson Petal And The White
by Michel Faber
Harcourt, Inc./Harvest; Published: 2003; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Great Expectations ImageGreat Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops: $12.10
This Side of Paradise ImageThis Side of Paradise
by Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops: $6.95
Similar Books and other products
The Corrections ImageThe Corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
Farrar Straus & Giroux; Published: 2001-09-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops: $28.00
Greek Americans: Struggle and Success ImageGreek Americans: Struggle and Success
by Charles C. Moskos
Transaction Publishers; Published: 1989-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $22.95
Price in other shops: $24.95
Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry ImagePomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry
Somerset Hall Press; Published: 2008-02-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.21
Price in other shops: $19.95
The Sense of an Ending (Borzoi Books) ImageThe Sense of an Ending (Borzoi Books)
by Julian Barnes
Knopf; Published: 2011-10-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.97
Price in other shops: $23.95
Empire Falls ImageEmpire Falls
by Richard Russo
Knopf; Published: 2001-05-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops: $35.00
Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) ImageMiddlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Picador; Published: 2002-06-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.78
Price in other shops: $15.00
A Visit from the Goon Squad ImageA Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
Knopf; Published: 2010-06-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.55
Price in other shops: $26.95
The Virgin Suicides ImageThe Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1993-04-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $40.00
The Virgin Suicides: A Novel ImageThe Virgin Suicides: A Novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Picador; Published: 2009-04-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.54
Price in other shops: $14.00
The Marriage Plot: A Novel ImageThe Marriage Plot: A Novel
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2011-10-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.24
Price in other shops: $28.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories