Book Three: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Review

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

a mount called Olympus

Nationality: American

Year Published: 2002

On This List Because: Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003

Primary Location: Detroit, MI

Secondary Locations: Bithynios, Asia Minor

Smyrna, Asia Minor

San Francisco, CA

New York, NY

Edition I Read: Paperback, after it had won the Pulitzer, but not the Oprah edition. The cover with people looking out from a boat, and Detroit upside down in red below. I got it from the library.

First Sentence: I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

Sexiness

I found this to be a super sexy book. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am in love with Desdemona Stephanides, who spends half the book as an old woman. I read most of this book in the lineups for TIFF, and was scared that people would realize I was reading about an incestuous marriage including a woman I was in love with because of her dark braids and shapely figure. Also sexy: young Calliope’s crush on the Obscure Object, who smoked and brushed her teeth at the same time. And the Clarinet vibrations that Milt administered to Tess. I felt like a middle-aged woman reading a romance novel.

Book 3: Middlesex: mid point

This is a photo from Desdemona's Facebook page. I hope she accepts my friend request.

Enjoying the book immensely so far, mostly because I am in love with Desdemona Stephanides. She had me when she was young and braided and bosomly and incestuous, and she still has me with the dentures and the religion and the hysterics.

Man loses Backpack. Also, discussion question.

Me last friday

Hey everyone. I went to the production of Romeo and Juliet in High Park last week, and it started raining halfway through. The good news is that Romeo and Juliet are still happily married, because the second half of the play was cancelled. The bad news is that when I returned to my bike after the show, my backpack was gone, and in it was the book I was reading, The Playwright’s Guidebook. This was dismaying for many reasons, not least that it threw my reading schedule into complete disarray. I have tried to find the book in many bookstores around town, but apparently it’s not a very popular book. I have ordered it from the library, but it will take a while because all copies are on loan. In the meantime I activated my hold for Middlesex, which I’ll be able to pick up tomorrow probably. It’s been too long between Booklist Books anyway. I need to move on, and I’ll have to return to the Guidebook at a later time. I worry that I’ll lose the thread of the lessons the writer is trying to impart to me. But this is the way God wants it, I supppose.

I also had a question for discussion: if I have a heavy book, say, The Collins History of the 20th Century, that I want to be able to carry around with me, is it a good idea to physically divide the book into three parts, like with scissors, using construction paper to make new covers for it? I’m not sure if this would be inspired or barbaric. Other pertinent info: it is softcover, about a 1000 pages long, my mother gave it to me but a long long time ago, and I was planning to read it in three parts anyway to prevent any despair or boredom that would come from reading such a long book.

Book Three Announced; Also, Books in Between

The 3 options for book 3, following Vernon God Little, were as follows:

1,2 = East = Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize 2003

3,4 = South = The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, Booker Prize 2004

5,6 = West = J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize Winner 2003

I rolled a 2, so I will be reading Middlesex next after Vernon God Little. Sources tell me it is an excellent book.

Review for Vernon God Little is upcoming.

In between Life of Pi and Vernon God Little I read the following: