In the spring of 1974, teenager Callie Stephanides finds herself drawn to a strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop - leads her to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.Well, what a great 'toss around' debate we had with this month's book! I was surprised at the huge majority of acceptance Middlesex received from the group. Pretty well everyone agreed that it was a great read, with the history, description and compelling family dynamics being the common points of praise.
Nancy and Jeanette were a little more moderate in their views. Nancy found the subject matter of incest discomforting and the writing style laborious. She gave it 150 pages and then said goodbye to Jeffrey Eugenides! Jeanette who listened to it on audio book commented that it was repetitious and a little confusing. Someone else agreed that it was slightly lecture-like in style when it got into its genetic explanations.
But the majority found this book to be fascinating, especially the historic references of the time and the portrayal of an old world family adjusting to settlement in the new world of America. Viti thought there were many wise observations in the story and many of agreed. It covered more than incest and genetic accidents ... and we all found something that struck us enough to rate this book quite high.
Joan mentioned that she had read it took Eugenides nine years to write Middlesex. There was a brief discussion about whether this book was worth nine years of anyone's life, but the continuing discussion on genetics, personality traits and human make-up, in my opinion, made the book more than worthwhile of 0ur time.
If you've read Middlesex, leave a comment and let us know what you think, we'd love to hear from you.
