Summary and Reviews of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Media Reviews

Bookpage Middlesex is anything but ordinary. It is 'out there' in the best sense—a wry, unpredictable and ultimately wise book....It is funny and poignant and mythical, and very hard to put down.

Denver Post Eugenides writes a sweeping tale, incorporating the structure of the Greek myths into the angst-ridden world of teen sexual desire. He pulls together the strands of genocide, Prohibition bootlegging, race riots and middle-class striving into a romantic, cohesive novel.

Detroit Free Press At last Detroit has its great novel. What Dublin got from James Joyce—a sprawling, ambitious, loving, exasperated and playful chronicle of all its good and bad parts—Detroit has from native son Eugenides.

Elle Middlesex…concerns the turbulent awakening of sexual impulses and identity, and combines a gently ironic humor with an obsessive, shimmering nostalgia that the author traces with vivid intelligence and precision....The flagrantly talented Eugenides turns the fascinating, improbable story of hermaphrodite Calliope Stephanides…into a 500-plus-page saga that begins with Cal's forebears on the slopes of Mount Olympus and ends in a deeply felt moment of self-realization.

Entertainment Weekly (A-) Bighearted....Middlesex is a novel of roots and rootlessness....all in pieces, as all big family stories are, bursting the boundaries of logic.

Houston Chronicle Eugenides' generosity toward his characters is the hallmark of the novel.

Men's Journal At some point this fall, at a cocktail party or in some similarly chatty setting, you will overhear people talking about the 'hermaphrodite novel' and pressing the book upon others with the fervor of evangelical missionaries. So here's your heads-up The title is Middlesex; the author is Jeffrey Eugenides; yes, it's that good; and yes, it's about a hermaphrodite....But Middlesex is about a hermaphrodite in the way that Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel is about a teenage boy....Middlesex was nine years in the writing, and it's easy to see why; a novel of chance, family, sex, surgery, and America, it contains multitudes.

People Daring and inventive....An epic....This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness.

Philadelphia City News Middlesex is a gloriously ambitious, resonantly humane story about the inalienable human right to be oneself.

San Francisco Chronicle Book Review Unprecedented, astounding....praiseworthy, prizeworthy.

School Library Journal - Enoch Pratt Free Library Adult/High School-Mostly, the novel remains a universal narrative of a girl who's happy to grow up but hates having to leave her old self behind. Readers will love watching the narrator go from Callie to Cal, and witnessing all of the life experiences that get her there.

St. Louis Post Dispatch Eugenides maps out a territory where all kinds of love, memories and despairs engage readers and then evanesce....This fiction is a revelation of originality and vast invention.

The Christian Science Monitor A novel of extraordinary flexibility, scope, and emotional depth.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal is a wonderfully engaging narrator.... A deeply affecting portrait of one family's tumultuous engagement with the American 20th century.

The Philadelphia Inquirer With Middlesex, a mirror-house love poem to his Greek 'Family,' Jeffrey Eugenides proves he has literary muscle second to none.

The Washington Post Book World He has simply gotten better and better.

USA Today This is a big book, so wildly imaginative that it borders on the bizarre, and yet so warm-hearted that it's hard to resist.

Vanity Fair Eugenides' gift is to take subject matter that could easily devolve into tabloid fodder and instead mine it for delightfully weird, dark-hued comedy and highly original plotting.

W Magazine A truly extraordinary yarn....In a worthy bid for Great American Noveldom, Eugenides covers the tremendous swath of 20th-century history, from the automobile assembly lines of 1920s Detroit to the formation of the Nation of Islam…from a Prohibition-era speakeasy to a private-school locker room in 1970s Grosse Pointe. This sort of greatest-hits Odyssey can easily get out of hand…but Eugenides pulls it off with dazzling artistry and a deceptively light-fingered style.

Book Magazine (4 ½ Stars) Highly compressed, explosively sudden comparisons are Eugenides' forte. Some are charmingly written….Others have the force of poetry....When Eugenides deals not in metaphor but in historical detail, he imbues facts with the same piquancy as his imagination....A great-hearted novel.

Library Journal Starred Review. From the beginning, the reader is brought into a world rich in culture and history, as Eugenides extends his plot into forbidden territories with unique grace....Once again, Eugenides proves that he is not only a unique voice in modern literature but also well versed in the nature of the human heart. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Beautifully written....Eugenides has an extraordinary sensitivity....This is one determinedly literary novel that should also appeal to a large, general audience.

The New York Times Book Review Expansive and radiantly generous....Deliriously American.

 Salman Rushdie Middlesex…is a wonderfully rich, ambitious novel—it deserves to be a huge success.