"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."
So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.
4 out of 4 found this helpful:
First Half: Excellent
JJ(San Francisco)
1.
I spent the entire day reading Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex (apparently the Pulitzers Price for Fiction winner of the year).
It is a birthday gift from Gui. I’m on page 322 (out of 520 pages). It is a family saga that started in 1920 and ended in 2000(I’m guessing since i’m not there yet but it did mention GW Bush’s election). It started in a small Greek village above the city of Bursa of Asian Minor, went to Detroit in 1920’s, and to present day Berlin.
I was intrigued by those historical events that mostly I remained ignorant till now. I was pained at the description of the burning of the great city Smyran by the Turks in 1920, and amused by the Ford Company policy in the 1920’s Detroit. They sent FBI style inspectors to their worker’s home to ensure “our workers spent their $5/day pay properly”, by which they meant whether there were houseflied in your house, whether your garbage can has a lid, and they were thorough. Their final “verdict” that would be read aloud in the worker’s kichen would include such details as the style of your tooth brush and the frequency of your bath. The description of Ford Language School’s (most of the workers were new immigrants who spoke little to none English) Graduation ceremony resembled Chinese revolution Opera during Culture Revolution, full of propaganda slogans.
The narrator’s grandparents were in their early 20’s, fleeing from the incoming Turk army. They went through the Burning of Smyran (now Izmur in today’s Turkey), long ocean voyage Titanic style (minus the sinking, it was Leonardo and Kate story with a twist), Detriot the newly blooming city in 1920’s aiming to overtak New York, its racial tension building up over the years, bootlegging of liquors from Canada during prohibition, burning of Detriot during the socalled racial “riot” in 1967 which ended with National Guards shooting their way into town hiding inside their armored tanks, Tian’an Men Square style, etc. etc. etc.
The author waved his family story with the history of Detriot and Asian Minor with such a skillful and humorous pen. It was an enjoyable read. Here is one of many quotes that i loved, the narrator’s grandma had a silk farm back in their mountainous Greek village above the city of Bursa:
~~~~~~~~Quote Begin~~~~~~~~~~~~
"According to an ancient Chinese legend, one day in the year 2640 B.C.......
full review2005-12-07 14:24 | comment
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