Middlesex

This novel sprawls across three generations; it covers the destruction of Smyrna, WW2, the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Detroit riots. There is incest, liquor running and sordid adventures in the skin trade. It is the story of Callie, a pseudohermaphrodite or, if you prefer, a transgendered individual. She grows up in an eccentric Greek immigrant family, hot dog moguls with a closet full of secrets. They are irrepressible and call to mind that other wacky Greco- American clan, the Sedarises . They are quirky but they are Callie's heritage, the source of the recessive fifth gene that leaves her stuck in the middle, neither fish nor fowl. She lives in a house named Middlesex and later in the divided city of Berlin (this is not a subtle novel).

I found the first half of the book heavy going (hard to read but imagine how much harder to write!). I felt weighed down by its epic scope but was forced to push on because it was the only book I had to read in Paris, other than trash left by previous renters of the apartment I was staying in. The second half of the book which focuses on Callie is easier to read. In the end the novel is overly ambitious and tries to tell too many stories but is kept afloat by its humour. It becomes as tangled as the silk threads spun by grandmother Desdemona's silkworms (don't get me started on the contrived segment wherein Desdemona teaches silk production classes at Detroit's first Black Muslim mosque).

Take away the genetic mutation, the talking fetus and the literary allusions and at its heart this is an immigrant saga about a family forced to leave its past behind, a second generation success story and a third generation coming of age tale. As such it doesn't suck.