Middlesex - Book 1

--by Abby

Chapter by chapter seems really difficult for this book (many chapters, too compelling to stop to blog). As an alternative I'm going to do an entry for each book within the novel.

Book 1
One can't help but notice the emblem on the cover of Middlesex that reads: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. It shows. The writing is fantastic. The narrative style is unique and interesting and really sucks you into the story by mixing the past and present and giving away what seems like too much information, but eventually you realize it isn't a mystery novel. You know how it ends. The thing that keeps you hooked is trying to understand how it comes to such an end. The psychology of the characters is fascinating.

(Spoilers in green)

The book opens with Cal (formerly Calliope) blatantly stating his mixed sex and mingling science, personal anguish and nostalgic, wistful tidbits about the family history. As a person completely defined by his genetics (in a more segregating way than most of us) Cal has studied his family and found all the coincidence, the parallels, the moments of fate that led to his birth as a girl.

The first momentous family story occurs as Cal is in the womb with his grandmother divining his sex with a spoon over his mother's belly. The story reverses back to Cal's highly scientific conception then rewinds back much further to the story of his grandmother as a young woman in the old country.

I am so impressed with the story of Desdemona and her little brother Lefty. From the first, you feel the oncoming incest, but you expect some horrible event, some violence, some mortifying guilty mistake. Instead I found myself falling for their confusing love story, a brother and sister in love, in denial. They are so innocent and young and alone in the world that you really can't judge or hate their forbidden romance, and so instead I was happy for them.

Later, when Desdemona and Lefty are living as man and wife, there is this dread that their children will betray them, punish them for not knowing better. But the children are fine (and then I realize that the kids have to be at least mostly healthy, because I know that their son is Cal's father. Silly me.) Anyway I mourn the loss of intimacy between the couple as Desdemona is consumed with guilt and Lefty with jealousy for his wife's attention.

New fears arise when Desdemona is forced to take a job and unwittingly becomes a silk-stress for the young church of the Nation of Islam (complete with fully functioning militant wing, even as the first Detroit church is in its infancy). And that is pretty much where the first book leaves off, though its interspersed with stories from Cal's adult life that inspire memories of his family's history.

I think one of things that really makes the story believable is the true history of the exodus of Greeks, the early Detroit auto manufacturers, the impact of the Depression. I find I'm picking up quite a bit of history in this story and I like it. I'm really excited to read more. Probably will finish over the long weekend.

Middlesex Handoff

--Abby

After much silence, I've finally begun Middlesex. I think I'll revise and reissue Miranda's previous posts, adding my thoughts in a different color or something. If I get ambitious, I'll add some summary posts.

I gave up on the Faulkner book, it was way too painful.

To make an effort to acheive my 25 books a year goal, I've made a little calendar for myself, laying out the book plan. I'm thinking about posting it here, but the sidebar is already quite full. I might just put up a link to it instead, or add it as a blog entry and I can repost it whenever I make changes.

Finishing Middlesex

ep-ic -adjective
1. noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
2. resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.
3. heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.
4. of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

Maybe I should have gone chapter-by-chapter with this one, because now that I'm trying to decide where to start, the book just seems so big. It's a coming-of-age story; it's historical fiction about Greek immigrants, the Depression, the Detroit Race Riots; it's a story of incest, guilt, and family; it's a story about the awkwardness of adolecence; it's a story about what it means to be a girl, a boy, neither, and both. It's a wonderful story that spans three generations of the Stephanides family, and the decisions they make that shape their lives and the lives of their decendants.

I'll put my spoilers in GREEN, if you want to skip past.

First, let me begin with my MS Paint version of the Stephanides Family Tree. I didn't feel like going back into the book to try and figure out the older generations' names, so I just left them blank. I also know that Desdemona and Lefty were Third Cousins along with being brother and sister, but I didn't want to use the brain power to try and figure out how to depict that. You get the idea just from looking at my drawing that the family tree is a little... circular. A brother and sister marry, and their son marries his second cousin. Is it any suprise that their child has a rare genetic disorder: Calliope Stephanides is a 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodite. While at first appearing to be female, Callie is genetically male. The condition goes undiagnosed and unnoticed until Callie reaches her early teen years, when she fails to develop as the other girls have, and she falls in love with another girl at her school. Eventually Callie learns the truth about herself, and changes from Callie to Cal.

Truly Middlesex is a remarkable book. Cal is a unique narrator, not just considering his unique genetics. I would highly recommend the book to anyone, it's a fascinating story. I could go on and on about it, but since no one else here has read it yet, I would only be writing it for myself.

I think the highest praise I can give Middlesex is that it instills in me a form of envy. This is the kind of book I wish I could write. Epic, Smart, Beautiful, and Moving.

Middlesex, and then some

-by Miranda

I wasn't going to post about Middlesex until I finished the book, but it's been dull as ditchwater around these parts this last week or so, so I decided to post up. In case you were wondering, I was going to wait until I finished the book to post because I like being able to look at the book as a whole rather than disecting it bit by bit. I'm not going to completely eschew chapter-by-chapter posts (I've got a book in mind that I'll be posting by chapter) but for now I'm going to go with a more traditional book reviewy style, giving my opinion and trying to avoid spoilers. I'll still clearly mark when I'm about to spoiler it up, but, like I did with Memory Keeper, I'll try not to give away too much of the plot in my write up.

Anyway- Now that I'm done with business, let me get down to... business.

I'm just about halfway through Middlesex, and I can't wait to send this book off to Abigayle. It's so so good. The writing itself is beautiful, and the story is very complicated and compelling. How wonderful to find a book with both of these Cs, so often I read boring books with complicated plots, or simple books that I just don't give a damn about. Middlesex is told as sort of a memoir, with the narrator Cal breaking in every once in a while to give updates on his current life. Of course, it's not really a memoir until halfway through, because for the first half of the book, Cal hasn't been born yet. But in order to understand Cal (formerly Calliope), you really do need to understand his family's history. And fascinating history it is. I plan on drawing up a family tree to go along with my next entry, which I'll post after I finish.

That's all I'll talk about for now, tune in sometime this week or early next for my complete entry on Middlesex.