Middlesex (2002)
Four Stars out of Five
Jeffery Eugenides
Jeffery Eugenides has crafted an amazing/frustrating amalgam
of a Pulitzer Prize winning (2003) novel in the form of “Middlesex”. This book
like its protagonist Callie/Cal is a pastiche of styles, themes, voices,
strengths and weaknesses. It is so much in my opinion a juncture of two
separate books, that I would like to give the first half five stars out of
five, but consign the second half to a mere two or three stars out of five; I will settle for my own pastiche and give it a mean value of four stars
out of five.
The first half of the book is in many ways a brilliant portrait
of an immigrant family and the powerful forces that led them to flee their
homeland in Bithhynos on the slopes of Mount Olympus in Asia Minor/Turkey. We
are introduced to life in a rural, inbred town where the ethnic Greeks are
definitely not integrated into the larger Turkish culture that surrounds them.
As they leave their home, barely making it out alive, the reader is introduced
to the conditions of that that small inbred town, how it permits, if not indeed
compels Lefty to marry his sister Desdemona, and how this literal defiance of
natural law and metaphorical defiance of the Gods leads to the genetic mutation
that lies at the root of Callie’s/Cal’s life two generations later.
Once in America, Lefty and Desdemona conceal their
consanguinity from all except their cousin Lina; she who has her own secret
(Lesbianism), the newlyweds will hold in secret as a quid pro quo for Lina
keeping their secret. As Lefty and Desdemona begin their life in Detroit, the
reader is exposed to the history of Detroit, some of the teachings of The Nation
of Islam and the race riots in the Detroit of 1967. Those riots lead to an insurance-borne
bounty for the Stephanides family and their White flight from Detroit to the
enclave of Grosse Point. The Stephanides experience their own exposure to
ethnic-based prejudice when they try to buy their new home, but still fail to
understand the rage and frustration of the Blacks they just fled. In Grosse
Point, the formerly cute Callie (or Calliope, muse of heroic poetry in Greek
mythology) begins to feel the effects of the mutation she has inherited. This
mutation has placed her into an “intersex” category but has heretofore gone
unseen by all around her, doctors and family alike. The problem for Callie is
that her mutation is now starting to masculinize her, and right at a most difficult
time for Callie as she has just enrolled into a cliquish prep school for girls.
Her problems compound as she finds herself irresistibly drawn to another girl.
Through a series of misadventures Callie learns of her genetic endowment,
decides to live as a male and to flee her home. The story concludes in a
somewhat rushed manner with the now middle-aged Cal living in the formerly
divided Berlin as a man working for the US government.
There are two themes that dominate this story: rebirth and
nature versus nurture. There are also some very interesting thematic elements
in the story such as how polar opposites (e.g. male and female) experience the
same events and also how the use of Greek mythology is used to expand many of
the ideas in the book. The rebirth theme is quite probably the most key theme
throughout this story: the Greek immigrants’ rebirth as Americans and Callie’s
rebirth as Cal. The contrast between these two transformations is quite clever
and helps to knit the first half of the book to the second. How Callie came to
be transformed from a girl into a boy is discussed at length as a nature versus
nurture argument. While I enjoyed the discussion, I am far from convinced that
Science has come to as clear a conclusion as Cal did in terms of his decision
to opt for maleness. Most especially disturbing was the weight he (living as a
she) placed on his sexual orientation for females – this seems a rank dismissal
of gay orientations as being little more than misplaced genitalia; a concept
that I do not believe is embraced by modern medicine in any manner.
The polar opposite experiences of male versus female is I
think another prime feature of this book. Eugenides worked hard to create a
novel first person voice for an adolescent Callie and for the middle-aged Cal.
Indeed, the voice he uses for Cal as he describes the thoughts of his ancestors
in the first person when clearly he could not have known them is couched in two
very interesting ways. On the one hand, Hermaphroditus the Greek from mythology
that Cal most clearly aligns himself with had the ability to know and to feel empathy
with his ancestors, and then in addition through his use of ironic language, Eugenides
lets it be known he is being somewhat facetious and that Cal must be regarded
as an unreliable narrator.
The use of Greek mythology is also very cleverly used by
Eugenides. Consider how on the night of Callie’s conception, her parents were
attending a play called The Minotaur; this half bull, half man is but one example
of the divided natures of so many parts of “Middlesex”. Other significant
examples of Greek mythology would include the aforementioned Hermaphroditus’
abilities, Calliope as both a Greek muse of heroics and her namesake as the
book’s narrator of her own heroics, but I think one of the cleverest is the
role played by Callie as Tiresias in her school’s play. This Greek character
also displayed in her life dual natures as male and female, but also acted as a
seer and fore-teller of things unseen; again a hearkening to Hermaphroditus’
similar abilities.
The problems with the book that I had were that it was
almost like two books. Book 1 dealt as a family saga or historical novel on the
life and times of Greek immigrants in mid-20th century America,
while Book two dealt in far less a compelling way with the Callie’s
transformation. This latter book was done as Bildungsroman type of story and
was done in a far too wordy manner. And yet despite being too verbose, one
could easily complain that it was not as easy to follow Callie’s transformation
let alone Cal’s final denouement as easily as it was to follow his/her family’s
adventures in part 1. Another criticism is the one already leveled in terms of
Callie’s decision to live as Cal. This aspect of the book is particularly
ironic as Eugenides has stated publicly that his primary motivation in writing
of Callie’s intersex nature was his own dissatisfaction with a memoir written by
an actual intersex individual in the 19th century (“Herculin Barbin”).
Those comments aside, “Middlesex” is a brilliant book that
brings a unique voice to the narrator, speaks compelling of the immigrant
experience and helps to shed some light on the lives of one group of American
still struggling to gain acceptance and understanding from the wider community
around them; that is to say those not fitting neatly into strictly defined
sexual categories, those of an intersex category. This book is not for
everyone, but for those of you interested in the immigrant experience or in
unique narrative styles, this book might well be of some interest.
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