Synopsis
"Cal" Stephanides recounts his rich family history, beginning with his grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty (secretly siblings), as they leave Greece in the 1920s and settle in Detroit. By the time Calliope is born in 1960, his parents are upper middle-class Greek Americans, but when he is 14 they discover that Calliope is actually a hermaphrodite. Taking the name "Cal," he runs away, finally finding a home in a San Francisco burlesque show. Jeffrey Eugenides's epic novel, like its main character, is a wonderful hybrid creature that perfectly captures three distinctly American stories: the immigrant tale, life in the 1960s suburban world, and finally the gender-bending and identity-altering situations that we associate with the beginning of the 21st century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2003, MIDDLESEX became both a literary and a commercial success--a success further bolstered by its selection for the Oprah Book Club in 2007.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2007-06-05 | | Series: | Oprah Book Club | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 529 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 14.4 oz |
Industry Reviews
"[W]hile some of the odds and ends Eugenides tosses into the mix...don't quite integrate, far more often than not the novel feels rich with treats, including some handsome writing....[T]he novel's patron saint is Walt Whitman, and it has some of the shagginess of that poet's verse to go along with the exuberance. But mostly it is a colossal act of curiosity, of imagination and of love."
New York Times Book Review - Laura Miller (09/15/2002)
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