Middlesex (novel)

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Middlesex
Author	Jeffrey Eugenides
Cover artist	William Webb (Bloomsbury paperback)
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel, family saga
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK) Farrar, Straus and Giroux (USA)
Publication date	7 October 2002
Media type	print (paperback and hardback) and audio-cd
Pages	529 pp (Bloomsbury paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-374-19969-8 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover) ISBN 0-7475-6162-1 (Bloomsbury paperback)

Middlesex is a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was published in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.

The narrator and protagonist, Calliope Stephanides (later called "Cal"), an intersexed person of Greek descent, has 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. The bulk of the novel is devoted to telling his coming-of-age story growing up in Detroit, Michigan in the late 20th century. This story, however, is intertwined with elements of a family saga, meditations on the era's zeitgeist and bits of contemporary history.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Awards and nominations 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The novel begins with the narrator, aged 41, deciding to tell the story of his recessive gene that caused him to be born Calliope and later to become Cal. The narration periodically returns to the frame story of present-day Cal, who is bearded, male and interested in women, foreshadowing the personal revelations of Callie. The narration briefly explains how Desdemona, Cal's grandmother, predicted her grandchild to be male while Calliope's parents had already made schemes they believed would result in a daughter.

The story starts again further back in time, in a small village in Asia Minor, with the story of the protagonist's Greek paternal grandparents. In the aftermath of the 1922 war between Greece and Turkey, and amid graphic scenes of the Great Fire of Smyrna, the orphaned siblings Eleutherios ("Lefty") Stephanides and his sister Desdemona seek refuge by emigrating to America. With great ambivalence, but with few other options amidst tremendous upheaval and trauma, Desdemona agrees to marry her brother, who has been increasingly regarding her not as a sister, but as a potential lover. Fleeing incognito by ship, they are free to marry without risking the legal and social prohibitions of marriage between siblings. While traveling to the United States, they plan and carry out a feigned courtship in which they genuinely attempt to suppress (or at least deny) memories of their former life together as brother and sister. Having successfully deceived their fellow passengers, the ship's officers, and to some extent themselves, Lefty and Desdemona are married by the captain in as traditional a Greek Orthodox ceremony as can be improvised. They reach the United States, and settle in Detroit, Michigan, home of their cousin Sourmelina ("Lina"), their American sponsor, and her husband Jimmy Zizmo. Learning the ups and downs of the American culture, Desdemona and Lefty run into many hardships. Lefty soon goes into an illegal business run by Jimmy. After both Lina and Desdemona become pregnant on the same night after seeing a sexual play, Jimmy soon becomes suspicious. Increasingly paranoid, Jimmy starts to question Lefty on the pregnancy of Lina while driving across thin ice to Canada. Realizing that both men could die if the car plunged into the ice, Lefty jumps out the car leaving Jimmy driving. After a while, the car is heard plunging into the ice with Jimmy still inside. In time, Desdemona gives birth to a son, Milton, while Lina gives birth to a daughter, Theodora, called "Tessie".

Desdemona is made aware of the potential for disease in children due to consanguinity and becomes anxious about her pregnancy. After the death of his brother-in-law, and a decline of his marriage, Lefty decides to open a bar and gambling room, calling it the Zebra Room. The Zebra Room is a great success for the family until the Great Depression, which forces Desdemona to get a job as well. Only having experience with sericulture, she is hired by the early Nation of Islam and hears the leader named Wallace Fard Muhammad, speak through the building ventilation system. Since Desdemona is white, she is restricted from hearing or even participating in the teachings of Islam. After the church is closed down because of FBI accusations, curiosity gets the best of her and she decides to examine the restricted area. She accidentally bumps into Fard who identifies himself as Jimmy Zizmo, Lina's husband and Lefty's business partner in running liquor in the 1920s. After yelling at Jimmy for leaving Lina alone to care for their child, Jimmy states to her that he faked his death out of his distrust of his wife, Desdemona and Lefty. He believed that the three of them used him to get into the United States and that Lefty later impregnated Lina. After Jimmy and Desdemona's argument, Jimmy soon leaves, never to be seen again.

Lefty and Desdemona's son, Milton, marries Lina's daughter, Tessie. Milton and Tessie, who are second cousins, have two children. "Chapter Eleven" (a reference to the fact that he eventually becomes bankrupt^[1]) is a normal boy but Callie is intersexed, although the family doesn't know about it for many years, and is raised as a girl.

At fourteen, Callie falls in love with her female best friend (referred to in the novel as "The Obscure Object") and has her first sexual experiences with both sexes. After an accident, a doctor discovers that Callie is intersexed, and she is taken to a clinic in New York where she undergoes a series of tests and examinations. Faced with the prospect of sex reassignment surgery, Callie runs away and takes the male identity of Cal. Cal hitchhikes cross-country, finally arriving in San Francisco, where he becomes an attraction in a burlesque show.

Milton, back in Detroit, repeatedly receives phone calls from an anonymous man saying he knows where Callie is, and will release her for a ransom of $25,000. Milton questions the man on family details, to which the man replies correctly. Milton drops the money but changes his mind, figuring that something isn't right, and finds it's his priest brother-in-law and his wife's former fiancé, Father Mike. This leads to a car chase to the Canadian border, where Milton is killed in a pile-up, and Father Mike is arrested.

The club where Cal worked is raided by police, and Cal is returned into Chapter Eleven's custody in time for Milton's funeral back in Grosse Pointe. Desdemona sees Cal as male for the first time, and the book ends when Desdemona confesses to Cal that Lefty was her brother. Cal stands in the doorway to the family's Middlesex home (a Greek tradition touted to keep spirits of the dead out of the family home) while Milton's funeral takes place.

[edit] Awards and nominations

• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2003)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The New York Review of Books review of Middlesex
• Excerpt of Middlesex
• First chapter of Middlesex Free registration required.
• Middlesex at Fantastic Fiction
• Photos of the first edition of Middlesex

Awards
Preceded by Empire Falls by Richard Russo	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2003	Succeeded by The Known World by Edward P. Jones