Middlesex
Last Friday I finished the second of Eileen’s book recommendations, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. I knew absolutely nothing about it before I started, and I deliberately avoided the introduction at the front of my edition. I needn’t have worried. The big “hook” of this story – that it’s being narrated by a hermaphrodite – is given away on the first page. It’s not so much the story of what Cal is, but how he came to be what he is. So instead of immediately gratifying my curiosity (and voyeurism), Eugenides’ narrator abandons his intriguing opening in favour of the story of how Cal’s grandparents immigrated to the US. They escaped the Great Fire of Smyrna (it was eye-opening to be reading this while the debate about the Armenian Genocide is going on) and eventually ended up in Detroit. Eventually the story skips ahead to follow the romantic tribulations of Cal’s parents, first-generation Greek-Americans who had no idea what the previous generation had gotten up to. By the time Cal(liope) is finally born halfway through the book, I couldn’t put it down.

That’s not to say the book is perfect. The family stuff is certainly compelling – and the hermaphroditic element is undeniably interesting – but overall I never really warmed to Cal as a person. I liked Calliope and I sympathized with her confusion, but I didn’t find her sudden transition to Cal to be very believable. This review from the New York Review of Books spells it all out much better than I can. Still, the characters are all vivid and fascinating, and it taught me a little bit about a period in history I knew very little about. (My favorite part was probably the reintroduction of Desdemona to the narrative. I had actually thought several times to myself, “What happened to her? Did I skip a paragraph where she died?” Ha!)

Now I’m on to The Accidental by Ali Smith, as recommended by Brittanie. Again, I’m going in cold. So far it’s a very different read to Middlesex, like the difference between an impressionist Art Film and a sprawling Scorsese narrative.