Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides

3.73 of 5 stars 11 ratings • 3 reviews • 44 shelved
Book cover for Middlesex

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In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, Callie has inherited a rare genetic mutation. The biological trace of a guilty secret, this gene has followed her grandparents from the crumbling Ottoman Empire to Detroit and has outlasted the glory days of the Motor City, the race riots of 1967, and the family's second migration, into the foreign country known as suburbia. Thanks to the gene, Callie is part girl, part boy. And even though the gene's epic travels have ended, her own odyssey has only begun. Sprawling across eight decades - and one unusually awkward adolescence - Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both GRANTA and the NEW YORKER.
  • ISBN10 0613996747
  • ISBN13 9780613996747
  • Publish Date 1 September 2003 (first published 4 September 2002)
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 6 April 2021
  • Imprint Turtleback Books
  • Edition Turtleback School & Library ed.
  • Format Hardcover (Library Binding)
  • Pages 529
  • Language English