Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex is a extravagant book, but you can see that all that's written down in it is totally true. "I was born twice", thats the best part of the entire book, because that motivate people to read it and to get involve with the life that we are living because its almost the same than before.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex Review:

"Some people inherit houses; others paintings or highly insured violin bows. Still others get a Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed."

Calliope, Callie, Cal.

Meet our narrator, our single all-knowing, all-seeing narrator who is variously a little girl named Callie, who is as pretty as a button and looking forward to the excitement of adolescence and all it has to offer - and yet who is also a 14 year old boy. Alone, scared and insecure, a boy who has just come to understand something about those "family jewels" that s/he has inherited and carries between his legs.

Callie will carry her reader on a journey that starts with her grandmother Desdemona and brother Lofty who have grown up in rural Bithynios in Asia-Minor where their feelings for each other explode just as the village is to explode more literally around them and force them to run to Smyrna. In Smyrna they will incredibly, successfully escape the Turkish rule of 1922 and it is on board the relative safety of a ship taking them to a new life in the US that somehow or other they take each other's hand in marriage

Through the race riots of Detroit and the birth of the Nation of Islam, through Prohibition and liquor-running and through the boom of Motor City and the birth of their two healthy children Tessie and Zoe, Desdemona will never truly be able to live a comfortable existence knowing the dark secret that she and her husband/brother keep.

Yet when the following generation come along, the two children Chapter Eleven and Calliope are given a full bill of health and for a while Desdemona's secret worries seem to have been over nothing .

Finally we begin to meet the young Callie herself, and grow with her as she enjoys the tranquillity and comfort of the rambling house, Middlesex, and the relative excitement of her new girls' school and exotic and attractive friends

This novel is an amazing mixture of a "coming of age" work with a cruel and difficult twist, intertwined with a family saga that spans three generations and several continents yet stays true to its "Greek tragedy" roots. Yet much of what holds the fabric of the work together is the tantalisingly familiar and pertinent voice of s/he who will narrate much of her own family history in an adult voice long before s/he has even been born in the narrative text.

Middlesex is about how others see you, it is about our need to "fit in" and be normal in a society that keeps on moving those darned normalcy goalposts anyway. Why should it matter SO MUCH if Cal has female and male genitalia? Why must a man slave to make money to gain any respect within society? Why did race ever affect our communal worldview so thoroughly and how does the "alien" ever successfully integrate into a new society without compromise or conflict?

Yet Middlesex is undoubtedly more than the obvious jars, the immediate landmarks - it is also a looping yarn that confidently lays out the nature vs. nurture question with alacrity. Cal is a product of her genes, she is a mix of interbreeding and no egg ever barred the way of its brother's sperm: no sperm ever slowed its swimming to stop the inevitable for her Callie is a product of her family's transatlantic adventures and no girl's school, or bows in her hair, or trinkets and truffles can belie her true nature.

Grandmother Desdemona decides that she would like to die soon after the sad demise of her "husband" Lofty, so she takes to her bed and awaits the inevitable. The inconvenience to her that she is as healthy as an ox is another small triumph for the reader who will collect up all reading memories of the family history and store them in that bedridden body thus:

"Everything about Middlesex spoke of forgetting and everything about Desdemona made plain the inescapability of remembering."

So we have social realism in all its mutating glory meeting myth and legend and superstition in all its old-Greek-lady-waiting-to-die glory. Perhaps there is a case of hope over biology, of love over genetics and sheer force of will over biodiversity. Or perhaps life is just a bit more complicated than that and in truth there will always be a place for the hard cold facts alongside the warmest of hopes and desires.

For all her allegory the aging Desdemona makes for a funny, daft and hugely enjoyable part of the work - and humour forms a very large part of this journey of ours. Let me give you a tiny insight:

""Why don't you go back to your own country?" one of them shouted.

"This is my country," Lefty said, and to prove it, he did a very American thing: he reached behind the counter and produced a pistol."

A night out at the theatre that gets everyone hot under the collar, the John-Lennonesque transformation of the geeky elder brother into the deeply spaced out child of the 60's virtually overnight even the unfortunate end of Cal's own father who has anything BUT the traditional "life flashing before me" thoughts as his imminent death heads straight for him.

All these formative moments, these important landmarks in a lifetime are treated with a smile, a laugh and a joke. Characters are flawed, they make mistakes and sometimes they look plain daft. They are human, and quite often in the course of this novel we will laugh at their failings because we see something of our own shortcomings in them.

The only thing that makes Middlesex a novel that should be read is the writing. Yes of course the family history, in all it's complexity is worthy of a big pat on the back to Eugenides - not least because it took no less than 9 years to weave together. Yes, it is also true that the consideration of the pseudo-hermaphroditism in Cal is handled admirably - being medically clear (and educating) without falling into a patronising tone. Yes, yes it is also true to say that the voice of Cal will ring in my ears for a long time to come - a believable and inspiring narratorial voice who can narrate from before their own conception without losing credibility is an act of bravery and no small skill, and is alone deserving of the doffiest of doffed caps.

Yet these things are clever - that doesn't mean they are going to make great fiction.

What DOES make great fiction is the ringing clear choice of words, of sentence structure and of tone: and the lyrical and entrancing movement of the story. Only the deftest of touch and most confident of penmanship could ensure that the sheer enormity and generosity of spirit and love of life that fills every page can pour itself into the hearts and minds of the reader. Let me give you a tiny example, it is a moment when a minor character called Doctor Philobosian knows it is time to leave the burning Smyrna:

"The smell of things burning that aren't meant to burn waft across the city: shoe polish, rat poison, toothpaste, piano strings, hernia trusses, baby cribs, Indian clubs. And hair and skin."

Stingingly truthful, concise, sharp, full of bathos and of compassion: all this in just one sentence of a novel spanning 500+ pages

All human life is here funny in parts, always insightful, honest and original: nobody can fail to adore the young Callie as she takes the unlikely role of everyman, dresses down the American dream and fumbles it back together again. Eugenides has done here what all authors aspire to: to make the universal truths stand in the shoes of the individual.

This is fundamentally a big-hearted offering, a sympathetic world view, a warm and soulful voice that speaks to every teenager who has ever wondered if they are REALLY part of *this* family to every member of a minority race who is just trying to fit in and to anyone who has caught sight of the cold winds sneaking inside the duffel coats of those who stand just outside the "accepted" boundaries of society.

Enjoy.

Jeffrey Eugenides won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for this hugely anticipated second novel. The Bloomsbury 2002 paperback edition has a cover price of £7.99 but is available from many sources at discounted prices - use the ISBN number 0-7475-6162-1. His first novel, "The Virgin Suicides" has gained a cult following and is now far more read than it was on first publication, and the subject of a successful film by the same name.