Middlesex

Middlesex

By: Jeffrey Eugenides

p.529
Farrar, Straus & Giroux

ISBN-10: 0312427735
ISBN-13: 978-0312427733

Annotation:
Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparent's desperate struggle for survival in the 1960s.


Summary:
Now on most Summer Reading Lists, this novel explores the difficulties of trying to discover who you are and in some case what you can become.

Imagine you are a person who for more than half of your life thought you were someone completely different, now imagine that this is the early 20th century. People are less understanding and even less knowledgeable that present day. This is but one part that makes of the complexities of Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex.

Calliope or as we grow to learn "Cal" is a fully formed hermaphrodite. At birth Cal was told that she was a girl and raised in such a manner for the first fourteen years of her life. It is then that she becomes the man she always knew she was. Eugenides does and exemplary job of balancing the issues of the time with the very difficult subject matter.

Readers will appreciate the realness that the author lends to the story and through it we can learn much about ourselves.