View of a section of the Elgin MarblesWhen Middlesex was being lauded in the press and by readers I know, I was skeptical -- I thought the hermaphrodite theme would be all over-the-top dragshow tranny meme-ing, designed to appeal to prurient readers. I wasn’t interested in hearing how a monosexual guy would imagine being a hermaphrodite (though I would be interested in an actual hermaphrodite's autobiography).
But I kept hearing Middlesex was good, particularly about the Detroit race riots in the '60s, and I kept seeing it on "best" book lists, and finally Kerry really recommended it and loaned me her copy.
As it turns out, the hermaphrodite business is handled very gently and sweetly, and the hermaphrodite, Callie/Cal, is actually the least interesting character in the book -- he/she's just kind of neutral, the ecru background against which the colourful characters swagger. As the adult male narrator, Cal is convincing and likable, but it's hard to picture him as the little girl he says he was. And that can’t be because a male author is unable to imagine what it's like to be female -- the best character in the book is Desdemona, Cal's paternal grandmother. She and all the women are as vivid as real life, and the men -- Lefty, Dr. Philobosian, Jimmy Zizmo, Milton, Father Mike -- are equally compelling. (Maybe that's a point being made, hmm.)
But mainly Middlesex is a boisterous 20th-century Odyssey (not that Eugenides strains this parallel) that hits a lot of exciting historical highlights as it pans from Europe to North America and back again. The Detroit history was interesting as advertised, but I was really taken with Desdemona and Lefty's story of growing up in Bithynios and fleeing the war. It made me want to drink bitter coffee and take up the hookah.
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