Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)
by Jeffrey Eugenides

List Price: $15.00
Our Price: $3.50
You Save: $11.50 (77%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.98 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

Book Review: I was turned off by the first sentence...but kept reading
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

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

General Books

• Literature & Fiction > World Literature > United States
• Contemporary
• Literary
• Genre Fiction > Family Saga
• Authors, A-Z > ( E ) > Eugenides, Jeffrey