Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (2003, Paperback, Reprint)

Middlesex

The Entertainment Critic Book Review, By James Myers
MIDDLESEX
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Published by Picador Books
An Imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
529 Pages
ISBN 978-0-312-42773-3
2003 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
OPRAH’S BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB SELECTION, 2007 SUMMER SELECTION
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
Five Star Rating: *****


“I had never seen such a big dictionary before. The Webster’s at the New York Public Library stood in the same relation to other dictionaries of my acquaintance as the Empire State Building did to other buildings. It was an ancient, medieval-looking thing, bound in brown leather that brought to mind a falconer’s gauntlet. The pages were gilded like the Bible’s…Following where the trial led, I finally reached

Hermaphrodite -1. One having the sex organs and many of the secondary sex characteristics of both male and female. 2. Anything comprised of diverse or contradictory elements. See synonyms at MONSTER.”



The latest novel by Jeffrey Eugenides is a coming of age story that traces a defective gene in an unforgettable family saga. The story is narrated to us by the protagonist herself. Born Calliope Helen Stephanides, her physician fails to recognize that Cal is not all that she appears to be, but rather she has 5-apha-reductase deficiency. Chromosomally, Callie is a male (she has both an X and a Y), she has no real penis, but instead a kind of extended clitoris and testes, but they remain undescended. The story of her Greek family is the most interesting and provocative tale I have read in sometime. This story is a very rough parallel to the Greek fable of Hermes and Aphrodite.

The novel begins in the small Greek village of Cal’s grandparents, Lefty and Desdemona. The two fall in love. The problem is that they are brother and sister, and intermarriage is forbidden by the church. They are forced to flee when the Turks invade Greece in 1922. On the passage to America, no one knows them. There are free to marry without risking social rejection. They marry while still on the ship. They come to American and meet their cousin Sourmelina and her husband in Detroit, Michigan. Lefty and Desdemona have a son, Milton. He later marries Lina’s daughter, Tessie. This again complicates things because we now have second cousins who intermarry. Tessie and Milton have two children “Chapter Eleven” (a reference to the fact that he eventually bankrupts the family business, Hercules Hot Dogs), who is a normal boy and Calliope, who is intersexed. This goes undetected for 14 years of Callie’s life, because his parents take him a doctor, Dr. Philobosian, who is from the old country, and is so elderly himself that his vision is impaired. Callie is therefore raised as a girl. But Callie has what she refers to as "the crocus";

The turning point in the novel comes when Callie reaches fourteen. She falls in love with her best female friend (referred to in the book as “The Obscure Object”), and has her fist sexual experience with both sexes. After an accident that leads to a physical exam for Callie, her doctor finally discovers the truth. Her parents take her to a trendy physician in New York, who puts Callie through a series of test, exams and photographs. He has plans to take his unique find national. Faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery, Callie becomes Cal and runs away to San Francisco, where he becomes an attraction in a sex show. The