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Angela's Reviews > Middlesex
Middlesex
by
by
I was really unsure about this book at first. I don't have a very good history with award-winning novels (see: scathing review of The Corrections). In general, I end up in the "I don't get it" camp.
But, happily, with Middlesex, I eventually got it!
By the end of this fantastic fake of a memoir, I was ready to give it five stars, but I had to remember my struggle through the first 100 pages or so (20% of the novel's girth). Again, by the end, I understood the necessity and the relevance of the slow-moving deep recounting of family history, but when I was reading those 100 pages not knowing what would come later, I found it really difficult to push through.
I guess that the birth of our main character was really the point of the book where it really started to pick up the pace for me, so if anyone else is struggling with the opening, I urge you to press on.
Some of the scenes of Callie/Cal's life experiences are so realistically portrayed that I found myself examining the cover art, critic's comments, and the author's biography looking for hints as to how he could know so much about such a unique situation and from a (mostly) female point of view. My confusion about that issue speaks highly of Eugenides skills as a writer. Middlesex is an amazing trompe l'oeil triumph - fiction as reality. Someone else's reality as fiction.
Fantastic. Truly fantastic. And fully deserving of every award it received! (High praise from this chick!)
But, happily, with Middlesex, I eventually got it!
By the end of this fantastic fake of a memoir, I was ready to give it five stars, but I had to remember my struggle through the first 100 pages or so (20% of the novel's girth). Again, by the end, I understood the necessity and the relevance of the slow-moving deep recounting of family history, but when I was reading those 100 pages not knowing what would come later, I found it really difficult to push through.
I guess that the birth of our main character was really the point of the book where it really started to pick up the pace for me, so if anyone else is struggling with the opening, I urge you to press on.
Some of the scenes of Callie/Cal's life experiences are so realistically portrayed that I found myself examining the cover art, critic's comments, and the author's biography looking for hints as to how he could know so much about such a unique situation and from a (mostly) female point of view. My confusion about that issue speaks highly of Eugenides skills as a writer. Middlesex is an amazing trompe l'oeil triumph - fiction as reality. Someone else's reality as fiction.
Fantastic. Truly fantastic. And fully deserving of every award it received! (High praise from this chick!)
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Reading Progress
July 5, 2007
– Shelved
Started Reading
February 27, 2008
–
Finished Reading
October 8, 2014
– Shelved as:
modern-canon
