top of page
Please Sign InClose
Email or User Name:
Password:
Forgot your password?
Remember me on this computer
Please register with Shopping.com.
Share your opinions and help others make informed buying decisions.Close
Email Address:
User Name:(4-14 characters.)
Password:(At least 7 characters, different than username.)
Verify password:
Verification code:

By clicking on the button below, you agree to the Shopping.com User Agreement and Privacy Policy.


Sign me up to receive Shopping.com's great deals and promotions.

Thank You  for registering at Shopping.comClose
The confirmation message has been resent to your inbox.
 
Please check your email account below to activate your membership:


No email yet?
Forgot PasswordClose
Your temporary password has been resent to your inbox.
 
A temporary password has been sent to your email. Once you sign in, please visit your member profile page to change your password.

No email yet?

Please enter the email address you used to register your account. If you can't remember your email, please contact customer service at support@shopping.com.
Email Address:
Clicking on "Submit" will reset your password. A temporary password will be sent to the email you enter above.
 
Jeffrey Eugenides and Benito Gomez Ibanez - Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides and Benito Gomez Ibanez - Middlesex

from $4.90 16 offers
 
 
 
 
 
Smart Buy! Lowest price from a Trusted Store
Buy.com Marketplaces
 
Lowest Price!
Amazon Marketplace
 
Featured Offer
Amazon Marketplace
 

Product Review

Much more than just the tale of a hermaphrodite.

by   holli105 ,   Feb 7, 2003

Pros:  A multigenerational epic with wonderfully likeable characters.

Cons:  Starts a little slow.

The Bottom Line:  An epic tragic comedy of a Greek family - spanning three generations. Wonderfully written and entertaining.

Overall Rating: 5/5 stars
 

Author's Review

Because I loved Jeffrey Eugenides first novel, The Virgin Suicides, I anxiously awaited his next offering. I ordered it without reading much about it and was a little put off by the synopsis. I more or less expected another Boys Don't Cry with a Greek Spin.

What Euginides gives us is so much more.

Yes, Middlesex is about Calliope, a teenage girl and/or boy who is the product of a family tree ripe with incest. Yes, we hear of her difficulties finding herself both emotionally and sexually. However, the book isn't mainly about her. I would say a good 2/3's of this book deal with her family history.. and what an interesting and entertaining history it is.

I love novels that span generations, so this was right up my alley.

The book begins in Greece, with Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides. As brother and sister, they are very close.. when Lefty starts to look for a suitable wife, Desdemona becomes very jealous and realizes she has romantic feelings towards him - feelings which Lefty shares. With the burning of their village and a flight to America on an immigrant ship, they find the perfect chance to start a new life as husband and wife.

They arrive in America and live with their cousin and her husband, Jimmy Zizmo. Only the cousin knows their secret and never shares it with a living soul.

So much of the book is about their difficulty finding their way in a new country. Eugenides has such a marvelous sense of humor, and doesn't miss a beat with these eccentric characters. I love all the descriptions of the deeply superstitious Greek traditions. Desdemona's character is one that we all have known at one time in our life.. a martyr, a worrier and towards the end, one of the greatest hypochondriacs in literary history.

We follow Lefty's beginnings at the Ford Motor Company, his rum-running days with dark and mysterious Jimmy Zizmo (some of the best comic moments come from their adventures) to his bar-keeping days in the basement of their house.

Desdemona is given equal time in the novel - and her adventures are just as entertaining as Lefty's. But out of the two of them, she alone carries the guilt and shame of their relationship, which haunts her throughout the book.

Desdemona, recalling stories from their village of monstrous babies born from incestual relationships, spends a great deal of the book in mortal fear that she will bestow this curse on one of her own.

But alas, their son Milton - the "hotdog king of Detroit" turns out fine. Not knowing of his parents true relationship, he marries his cousin, Tessie. They have two children - one of whom is Calliope.

The story is narrated by an older Cal (Calliope) throughout the book.. The family history is beautifully woven together with Cal's own story.

I'm sure you can imagine a little of how Cal's part of this novel goes.. not knowing she is a hermaphrodite (her family used the same doctor from the old country, who rarely did more than just glance at her during annual exams) Cal's experience during puberty are little short of traumatic. She doesn't understand her feelings for girls, her lack of developing like the other girls, etc..

The story continues until we find Cal in adulthood. I don't want to ruin the book by disclosing every bit of the story, so I'll stop with that.

I think one of Jeffrey Eugenides best traits as an author is his ability to put his characters in the most bizarre of circumstances without making them seem like freaks. As a reader, you can understand how each character made the choices they did - even Lefty and Desdemona. His characters are human... likeable and real. The stories all seem so realistic that I wonder how much is fiction and how much stemmed from history.

While this story does deal with the hermaphrodite issue - it isn't a purely sexual escapade into the bizarre. It's a tragic comedy about a family - an entire family - from beginning to end. I finished the book thinking that I wished I could check back with them a little later and see how things are going.
 

Compare stores & prices  |  See All Reviews »

 

Back to top

Stores and Prices

 
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

Fantastic prices with ease & comfort of Amazon.com! ( In stock )
Pages: 544, Edition: 1st, Paperback, Picador
Amazon Marketplace
3.0/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
See only offers from Amazon Marketplace (4)
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

( In stock )
Spanning eight decades, Eugenides s long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and...
Buy.com Marketplaces
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
Smart Buy
Hardcover, Middlesex

Hardcover, Middlesex

Fantastic prices with ease & comfort of Amazon.com! ( In stock )
Pages: 544, Edition: 1st, Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Amazon Marketplace
Featured Store 3.0/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
See only offers from Amazon Marketplace (4)
Audio - Compact Disc, Middlesex

Audio - Compact Disc, Middlesex

Fantastic prices with ease & comfort of Amazon.com! ( In stock )
Edition: Unabridged, Audio CD, Macmillan Audio
Amazon Marketplace
3.0/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
See only offers from Amazon Marketplace (4)
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

Get free shipping on orders over $25! ( In stock )
Pages: 544, Edition: 1st, Paperback, Picador
Amazon
Featured Store 3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
at Amazon
See only offers from Amazon (6)
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

New Lower Prices on Hundreds of Thousands of Books! ( In stock )
General Fiction - The Barnes & Noble Review Jeffrey Eugenides kept a fairly low profile after his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, caused a stir ...
Barnes and Noble
2.0/5.0 store rating
 
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

( In stock )
Daedalus Books
Review this store
 
Hardcover, Middlesex

Hardcover, Middlesex

( In stock )
Spanning eight decades, Eugenides s long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and...
Buy.com
Featured Store 3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
at Buy.com
See only offers from Buy.com (2)
Hardcover, Middlesex

Hardcover, Middlesex

Get free shipping on orders over $25! ( In stock )
Pages: 544, Edition: 1st, Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Amazon
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
at Amazon
See only offers from Amazon (6)
Audio - Audio Cassette, Middlesex

Audio - Audio Cassette, Middlesex

Get free shipping on orders over $25! ( In stock )
Edition: Unabridged, Audio Cassette, Audio Renaissance
Amazon
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
FREE SHIPPING
at Amazon
See only offers from Amazon (6)
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

Fantastic prices with ease & comfort of Amazon.com! ( In stock )
Pages: 89, Paperback, Bookclub-in-a-Box
Amazon Marketplace
3.0/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
See only offers from Amazon Marketplace (4)
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

Get free shipping on orders over $25! ( In stock )
Pages: 89, Paperback, Bookclub-in-a-Box
Amazon
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
at Amazon
See only offers from Amazon (6)
Audio - Compact Disc, Middlesex

Audio - Compact Disc, Middlesex

( In stock )
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls school, Grosse Pointe, MI, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry- blond...
Buy.com
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
at Buy.com
See only offers from Buy.com (2)
Digital, Middlesex

Digital, Middlesex

$7.49 with membership learn more ( In stock )
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry- b...
Audible.com
Review this store
 
Audio - Compact Disc, Middlesex

Audio - Compact Disc, Middlesex

Get free shipping on orders over $25! ( In stock )
Edition: Unabridged, Audio CD, Macmillan Audio
Amazon
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
FREE SHIPPING
at Amazon
See only offers from Amazon (6)
Paperback, Middlesex

Paperback, Middlesex

Get free shipping on orders over $25! ( In stock )
Pages: 673, Edition: Primera, Paperback, Editorial Anagrama
Amazon
3.5/5.0 store rating Trusted Store
 
FREE SHIPPING
at Amazon
See only offers from Amazon (6)
 

Compare all 16 store offers

 
 
Sponsored Listings

Discount Priced Books

By Jeffrey Eugenides. Save $5 & Get Free S&H on This Author's Work!
www.DiscountBookSale.com

Eugenides Jeffrey

Millions of titles, new & used. Qualified orders over $25 ship free
Amazon.com/books

Advertisement
 
 
advertisement
 
 

Copyright © 2000-2009 Shopping.com