Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Welcome to Black and White and Read All Over! This is the very first post and book review on this blog. May this be the beginning of an enduring and successful project.

Today I will review the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides which was published in 2002 and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

We learn from the very first page that the main character's story is about gender identity (i.e. (s)he is a hermaphrodite). This first person account is not your typical After-School-Special coming of age story about sexual identity,  and that is the source of the author's mastery.

This novel goes beyond narrator's life story exploring the origins his gender ambiguity and how it is the result of decisions made by his forebears. The story begins in Greece with the scandalous coupling of his paternal grandparents. The reader witnesses their voyage across the Atlantic and subsequent settling in Detroit, Michigan. As his grandparents begin their new lives in the new world and their family tree grows into the next generation, the scene is set for the introduction of the protagonist along with his dark secret.

This novel was intriguing. Even though the protagonist was born a female and was reared as a female, the voice of Cal is undeniably male. There's a matter-of-fact tone to Cal's story that lacks the melodrama that a female voice might interject. Cal states the facts in an almost objective way and because of this, the reader does not pity Cal because he was wrongly labeled a female. Instead the reader is treated to the great journey through time culminating in this strange, marvelous entity that is fated from several generations back.

This book makes the reader question gender. "Gender" is really a societal construct. Science tells us that all children begin with the very same sex organs in the womb. It is only the hormones secreted that determine if those sex organs will form the female sex organs or male ones. But what if the hormones are insufficient? What of the individuals who are "in-between" sexes because of some chromosomal anomaly? How do they fit into a society that has such rigid definitions of male and female? This book raises a lot of questions not just about gender identity in society but also about identity in general. How much of our identity is really "us" and how much of it has come pre-constructed by society?

Like all good books, this novel does not seek to answer these questions but raise the concerns in the readers' minds.

This is a great read and I would recommend it to anyone who can approach it with an open mind.

Keep reading,
Laurie