Jeffrey Eugenides
Middlesex

Middlesex is the name of the town where Calliope Stephanides's house is located. Calliope is a man.

Jeffrey Eugenides masterfully and discreetly takes us inside a story of tragedy lived with normality, accepted and internalized. Starting with the events of grandparents Desdemona and Lefty, immigrants to the United States from the Middle East, moving through the story of their son, Milton, and up to the pivotal narrative, that of the narrator, Calliope/Cal Stephanides, Eugenides tackles a thorny subject like sexual identity (Cal is, in fact, a rare type of hermaphrodite), crafting it with the sweetness and poetry of form, giving life to a dense and captivating book. The first half of the book sets the stage for the future events: the stories of Lefty and Desdemona first, and then of Milton and his wife Tessie, are narrated in preparation for the second half, where Cal tells, in the first person, of his experiences.

Eugenides, between a reference to Homer and a recessive gene descending like an announced storm on the Stephanides family, succeeds in constructing a believable and original story, a novel of roots, a reflection on the importance of the cultural and social environment in which one grows up. It is also, albeit marginally, a novel of America, America and its contradictions, its follies: the opulent America clashing and exchanging with the America that suffers from hunger. The America that discriminates and is discriminated against. There is the contrast between adoptive homeland and true homeland. A contrast between present and past, in a certain sense.

And then the theme of diversity, which obviously emerges very clearly from the pages of "Middlesex". Cal has accepted his condition, and all in all, others have too, each for various reasons. A message of hope? Could Jeffrey Eugenides be telling us that these people can and should be considered and treated like others? Probably. A thesis that sounds a bit rhetorical when expressed like this, but I assure you that if there's anything missing from this book, it's rhetoric. Love and nostalgia for the homeland, present and future, social contradictions of American society (and by reflection, the world), poetry, memory, diversity, and equality, love.

What is "Middlesex"? It is an elegy. Engaging and touching, an elegy of love about the love of a person, a hermaphrodite who tells us his story with modesty and sincerity. A great book on identity and diversity, both physical and mental. Jeffrey Eugenides has worked a miracle.