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Avg. Customer Review: 
 Excellent writing and an engaging plot
This book takes on a fascinating topic -- that of a young girl named Calliope Stephanides who discovers she is a hermaphrodite and ultimately decides to take on the identity of a boy. The plot is surrounded with the tremendous cultural and social richness stemming from the family's Greek heritage.In tracing the gene that resulted in Callie's hermaphrodite condition, the author takes us back to his Greek grandparents and their home in the village of Bithynios in Asia Minor. We follow them through the gripping political and human events of the early 1920's and their ultimate flight to the United States after Turkish troops invade the region. The reader is then immersed in a compelling tale of immigrant life in Detroit. Both the times and the characters are beautifully portrayed. Eugenides is a gifted writer. Middlesex is alternatively serious and funny. The characters are extremely well developed. The plot line is extremely engaging on a variety of levels. And, Callie's act of self-discovery -- and ultimate conversion to the boy "Cal" teaches tolerance to those who might question such happenings. Middlesex is 529 pages long so it is not for those seeking a quick read. However, if you like to immerse yourself in excellent writing, lively characters and an engaging plot, I recommend Middlesex highly.
Extraordinary story!
One of the challenges faced by writers is that of making old stories seem new and strange again, and to make ordinary, universal experience seem extraordinary and particular. Jeffrey Eugendies' "Middlesex" is a perfect example of this: superficially, it is the unusual, quirky tale of a hermaphrodite, and yet it captures and illuminates the commonplace trails of growing up and sexual awakening with as much tenderness, accuracy and originality as you'll find in any contemporary coming-of-age novel. This might sound irrelevant, but I came away from this book not so much admiring Jeffrey Eugenides as liking him. "The Virgin Suicides" was a lovely, sad book, but this is far more ambitious - it's a hubristic idea that could have dissolved into a shallow vehicle for cleverness in another writer's hands, and it's a credit to Eugenides' warmth and charm that this doesn't. Eugenides is more interested in character and story than in the nature/nurture question the book inevitably raises; on this, he takes a rather safe middle ground, opting for the free will and self-determination argument. While this makes the book a little less interesting in terms of ideas, it makes it a better novel.
Eugendies' greatest assets are his offbeat altruism, his generosity, his humour, and his striking imagination. He knows how to entertain a reader, and he takes care of you throughout this sizeable read, confident that he's tapping a rich vein not only with Callie's tale of gender but with the background story of a Greek family across generations and recent American history captured via the prism of Detroit. But it is with Callie's early adolescence that this book really shines, especially in Eugenides' descriptions of her love affair with the Object - here is Eugenides' best prose, fertile, supple and evocative, clearly fired by its subject, and remarkably androgynous. While the book sags in certain parts, and occasionally falters in its own high-wire act (I found it sometimes a bit hard to picture Callie the Man after Callie the adolescent girl was so real; but then, that's forgivable, considering the enormous difficulty of such an undertaking), it's these passages that illuminate just what a feat of imaginative empathy Eugendies has achieved with "Middlesex." I'd recommend it to anyone. (...)
 A bit of Greek to me
There were lots of interesting moments but nothing much deep nor writing style very clever to keep me involved. Plus I think the author took a couple of impossible short cuts. Perhaps my opinion is tainted by dissapointment with an event that we never get to see to its fruition--the hero's first full-blossomed romantic relationship. To me it was good, basic reading but nothing special.
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