Middlesex by Jefferey Eugenides
Image via WikipediaDespite hearing so many good things about Middlesex, I was hesitant to read it. I was hesitant to read it for two reasons, the first being that I had read The Virgin Suicides and I had been less than impressed. I didn’t hate The Virgin Suicides, it was decent enough, but I don’t think it was very satisfying. And I just didn’t care for the subject manner. I suppose that I don’t have very much humor when it comes to suicide and that’s the way it was portrayed in that book.
So when I started hearing about Eugenides new book, I was hesitant to read it. I did however, at one point pick it up to see what it was about, only to put it back down and move on to a different book. From the brief discription it seemed very ambigious and the only thing I was able to get out of it was that it had to do with sex. And even that wasn’t too clear.
Finally, I did pick up the book at the library. I decided that it was time to see what all the hype was about this book and well, I had recently had a conversation about The Virgin Suicides so that had been on my mind. I got home and decided to start reading it. And found that after a few pages I was sucked in and didn’t want to put the book down until I reached the end.
Despite my prior thoughts, this book wasn’t about sex. Or sex as I had priviously thought. It was about gender…more specific, the ambigious third gender. Even more specific, a hermaphodite. And it was also a family history the Greek American family the main character, Calliope (or Cal), was a member of. The book first followed her grandparents, then her parents and then finally Cal her/himself through the years and gave an explanation of how this fluke of nature occured and made Cal the way she/he was. Despite some taboo subjects in the book (primarily consensual incest), the book was very engaging and while other books might cause many people to become disgusted or offended by the subjects that popped up in the book, I didn’t feel that this was at all the intension of the author. It was just apart of an engaging story, and instead of becoming the primary focus, it was just something that happened that set off the events later on in the story.
Another reason why I felt drawn to this book was because, a few years ago I took a sociology class in college, it was called Sociology of Sex or something along those lines. I didn’t particularly enjoy the course as I didn’t get along with the professor at all, found her to be a right bitch, but despite that, I had found the course work to be interesting, particulary the unit on gender diversity…which, was pretty much the discussion of the “third gender” in many different cultures. This book, although fictional, touched on some of the material I had learned in this course, and from this book, Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda that I had read for that particular course.
I thought that overall this was an excellent book that deals with some taboo subjects in a manner that was quite smart and as unoffensive as possible. It has an easy flow to it, which makes it a fun read…but at the same time touches on subjects of history, culture, and social issues without taking away from the overall story. It has a smart way of dealing with the more taboo subjects of our culture and even throws in a tad bit of humor. I found myself laughting or chuckling out loud quite a few times in this book.
You might want to skip this book if you are easily offended, but if you aren’t easily offended and would like to learn more about gender issues without getting too technical or clinical, this is an interesting book to pick up. And if you read this book (or already read it) and would like to learn more about this “third” gender, the Nanda book is worth a read. It was pretty straitforward book and pretty interesting to learn about other cultures and how something that seems strange to us, is perfectly normal for them.
