Much more than just the tale of a hermaphrodite.

Because I loved Jeffrey Eugenides first novel, The Virgin Suicides, I anxiously awaited his next offering. I ordered it without reading much about it and was a little put off by the synopsis. I more or less expected another Boys Don't Cry with a Greek Spin.

What Euginides gives us is so much more.

Yes, Middlesex is about Calliope, a teenage girl and/or boy who is the product of a family tree ripe with incest. Yes, we hear of her difficulties finding herself both emotionally and sexually. However, the book isn't mainly about her. I would say a good 2/3's of this book deal with her family history.. and what an interesting and entertaining history it is.

I love novels that span generations, so this was right up my alley.

The book begins in Greece, with Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides. As brother and sister, they are very close.. when Lefty starts to look for a suitable wife, Desdemona becomes very jealous and realizes she has romantic feelings towards him - feelings which Lefty shares. With the burning of their village and a flight to America on an immigrant ship, they find the perfect chance to start a new life as husband and wife.

They arrive in America and live with their cousin and her husband, Jimmy Zizmo. Only the cousin knows their secret and never shares it with a living soul.

So much of the book is about their difficulty finding their way in a new country. Eugenides has such a marvelous sense of humor, and doesn't miss a beat with these eccentric characters. I love all the descriptions of the deeply superstitious Greek traditions. Desdemona's character is one that we all have known at one time in our life.. a martyr, a worrier and towards the end, one of the greatest hypochondriacs in literary history.

We follow Lefty's beginnings at the Ford Motor Company, his rum-running days with dark and mysterious Jimmy Zizmo (some of the best comic moments come from their adventures) to his bar-keeping days in the basement of their house.

Desdemona is given equal time in the novel - and her adventures are just as entertaining as Lefty's. But out of the two of them, she alone carries the guilt and shame of their relationship, which haunts her throughout the book.

Desdemona, recalling stories from their village of monstrous babies born from incestual relationships, spends a great deal of the book in mortal fear that she will bestow this curse on one of her own.

But alas, their son Milton - the "hotdog king of Detroit" turns out fine. Not knowing of his parents true relationship, he marries his cousin, Tessie. They have two children - one of whom is Calliope.

The story is narrated by an older Cal (Calliope) throughout the book.. The family history is beautifully woven together with Cal's own story.

I'm sure you can imagine a little of how Cal's part of this novel goes.. not knowing she is a hermaphrodite (her family used the same doctor from the old country, who rarely did more than just glance at her during annual exams) Cal's experience during puberty are little short of traumatic. She doesn't understand her feelings for girls, her lack of developing like the other girls, etc..

The story continues until we find Cal in adulthood. I don't want to ruin the book by disclosing every bit of the story, so I'll stop with that.

I think one of Jeffrey Eugenides best traits as an author is his ability to put his characters in the most bizarre of circumstances without making them seem like freaks. As a reader, you can understand how each character made the choices they did - even Lefty and Desdemona. His characters are human... likeable and real. The stories all seem so realistic that I wonder how much is fiction and how much stemmed from history.

While this story does deal with the hermaphrodite issue - it isn't a purely sexual escapade into the bizarre. It's a tragic comedy about a family - an entire family - from beginning to end. I finished the book thinking that I wished I could check back with them a little later and see how things are going.