Middlesex

Oof, I haven't reviewed this one either? It's been even longer since I've read most of this one. Goodness.

This book...what can you say about a book like this? It's an epic - Calliope sheepishly admits to her intentions right off the bat, but she fulfills them well - spanning four(ish) generations, and a wide range of cultures, subjects, and individuals. It makes for a packed book, but at over 500 pages, there is ample room for everything that ends up packed in here.

As the title not-so-subtly implies, this book features, and is narrated by, Cal(liope) - an intersexed individual who, having transitioned from female to male, writes a retrospective of her family - not just his parents, but his grandparents, and even great-grandparents, tracing his ancestry - and the genetic mutation that made him who he is - back to its roots in Greece.

But this book is not about an intersexed person. It's not even really about the mutation, or Cal's transition. Cal's ambiguous genitalia serve not as the subject of the narrative, but as a background to what the book is really about - family, identity, tradition, non-conformity, uniformity, commonality, individuality. It's about Greece, it's about immigration, it's about Chicago, about race, about alcohol, about the great melting pot that while promising to accept and celebrate the many colors and cultures that make up this nation, too often ends up just conforming all cultures to a drab grey.

The themes through this book are rich and multifaceted to the extreme. The most noticeable theme, a desire for uniformity and conformity faced with messy, diverse reality, is approached and examined from every angle, shows up in every subplot, as everything is woven together into the narrative.

It was a fascinating book, beautifully written, powerfully thoughtful. One can tell that it was exhaustively researched - no small feat for a book that spans a century of history across three continents - but its settings, both visually and historically, are vivid and rich, and the books' large cast of characters are well-developed.

This book is a delight to read, and an ambitious work of fiction that delivers wonderfully. I want to give it five stars, as it ranks up there with Foer's writing that I simply love. But as others have noted, the last 100 pages are a bit incongruous. Others have suggested that this book was a good short novel, weighed down by the first 500 pages, but I disagree. The bulk of this book is indeed purportedly wrapped around and leading to the end, and we get glimpses of the moments leading up to Cal's current life throughout the book. But after so much fantastic story and investigation of the themes that Cal writes back into his history, after reading the rich retrospective investigation of the themes that Cal traces back through his genealogy, the actual application of those themes is sorely lacking. The book peters out, putting together the necessary components that we've been waiting for, and then exits, as if sorely aware of the fact that it is already nearing 600 pages and doesn't want to bother you with much more than that.

And I'm not really sure that it could have done much better without another 100 pages, and I'm not sure if I would have the energy for that. Perhaps we should chop this book in half - I'll take the first 500 pages, and avoid the blatant, almost mechanical getting-the-pieces-together ending and instead leave it to my imagination, and those who felt weighed down by the bulk of the book can have their short novel, and both groups would probably both be happier.

That said, however, I highly recommend this book. It is fascinating, it is incredibly well-written, and it is a gorgeously put together novel, one whose length you don't feel until the very end. I wouldn't blame you if you gave up on the last few chapters, but don't let that discourage you from reading the rest of them, because they more than make it worth it. And really, at that point, you've already invested so many pages - what's another several dozen?