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4.14 AVERAGE
4.14 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I agree with those who’ve criticized this novel for biting off more than it can chew, but it was an easy and enjoyable read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Medical trauma
Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Drug use, Alcohol
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
I've actually read this book twice, once for myself and once for a student who was writing a paper on it. It's intriguing. The narrator draws the reader into the story and makes us want to understand his/her experience as a hermophrodite and a person who, like the mythical Tiresias, has lived both as a male and a female. I found myself thinking about what it really means to be a woman--or a man, for that matter--and wondering again if there's any way to separate nature from nurture. But the book is about a lot more than gender; it's about many ways of existing in the space between socially defined categories.
was reading for review for my library. due to the lack of support this book has from the intersex community, i’m removing it
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
the depiction of an intersex character was not good. it went into the past two generations of this character explaining how both generations were incestuous (blaming the person being intersex on this incest) and then used a lot of vocabulary that the intersex community doesn't like when describing the intersex character's experience's. Also wrote a lot about how being intersex naturally leads to gender confusion, which is also a thing a lot of intersex people have said they don't actually have. Very ill representation of being intersex, which is a problem for people who's only knowledge about it comes from reading this one book. Look up recommendations online from actual intersex people if you want to read or learn about it from better sources.
This is a classic novel in the classic American novel sense, not some postmodern thing full of joky references and artificial limitations. Although the PoV character's sex is undoubtedly the point of controversion the first half of the novel at least is the history of a Greek-American family from emigration just after WWI up until the 1970s when the third generation of the family in the US is growing up. And as this it is quite probably Eugenides' own family though how much I don't know. I seem to recognise the author also in his comments about San Francisco being 'where young Americans go to retire' - Eugenides has said elsewhere that his five years spent in that city in his late 20s - early 30s, before he moved to New York, were a waste of time. One could feel the same if one had moved from an outer suburb, where one's self was bound to wordless exile for six years, back to a proper city.
Eugenides' most recent novel is also getting some spotlight for having an apparent portrait of the much-missed David Foster Wallace as one of its main characters though in _Middlesex_ the narrator's brother (strangely called "Chapter Eleven"*) is similar to the later fictional character (and not necessarily that much like DFW any more than to any number of brainy, counter-cultural midwesterners).
The sex thing is interesting and works as a character driver for confused Cal/Callie, and then the whole book is about split identity and whether you can't in fact be two things - male and female, American and Greek. The thing about presidents and their names - this was written pre-Obama but Obama does seem to bear it out (cf. Dukakis, a contender with an odd name with plenty of vowels in it being an exemplar of the idea that anyone could, really, be President. Alas Michael D didn't make it but he could be seen as an Obama-precursor). * this seems to have to do with his bro's later bankruptcy, i.e. 'filing for Chapter 11'.
Eugenides' most recent novel is also getting some spotlight for having an apparent portrait of the much-missed David Foster Wallace as one of its main characters though in _Middlesex_ the narrator's brother (strangely called "Chapter Eleven"*) is similar to the later fictional character (and not necessarily that much like DFW any more than to any number of brainy, counter-cultural midwesterners).
The sex thing is interesting and works as a character driver for confused Cal/Callie, and then the whole book is about split identity and whether you can't in fact be two things - male and female, American and Greek. The thing about presidents and their names - this was written pre-Obama but Obama does seem to bear it out (cf. Dukakis, a contender with an odd name with plenty of vowels in it being an exemplar of the idea that anyone could, really, be President. Alas Michael D didn't make it but he could be seen as an Obama-precursor). * this seems to have to do with his bro's later bankruptcy, i.e. 'filing for Chapter 11'.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes