Reading Rainbow, Vol. 1: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

In short, Middlesex was one outstanding book. I read The Virgin Suicides, also by Jeffrey Eugenides, about three years ago, and it was very mediocre, but I was immediately glad to have picked up the former, as it was interesting from the very beginning:

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.

The book is the story of the Greek-American Stephanides family, centering around Calliope, a hermaphrodite, raised solely as an ordinary girl due to the fact that she was not identified as such until she was a teenager. Her grandparents flee Asia in the beginning of the story, aboard a ship bound for America. They pretend not to know one another and marry during the voyage. They begin their life in Detroit, where the story later moves on to the birth of their son Milton, then Milton's wife and children, Calliope and Chapter Eleven. The family's story passes through the times of prohibition, the Great Depression, and then to Calliope's life in the 1960s-1990s.

Eugenides was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this book, and of course, it became an Oprah Book Club selection, although I am not really too huffy about that in this case, as it provides deserved exposure for a great book. In fact, I think that if you don't like this book, you're probably Michelle Malkin, and you simply can't stand the Greeks.