Middlesex: A Legacy of Confusion

We are who we are at birth, and there’s not much we can do to change that. But for some the truth of their genetic makeup is a shocking reality.

I’m reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the first pick of my new book club, composed of myself and two other Bloggers, both much younger than I am. Over lunch we recognized how much we all love to read good books, and how we needed to be goaded into reading sometimes.

Little did I realize the book was about a hermaphrodite when I agreed to read it. But it’s about so much more than the story of sexual confusion. It takes place in Greece and in Detroit, of all places. It weaves fiction around the truth of the war between the Greeks and the Turks, the rise of Islam, and the race riots in Detroit.

I’m only halfway through at this point, but I’m having hard time putting it down because it is the page-turner that I have been missing in my other (couples) book club. We agreed to meet halfway through and then at the end to discuss the book over dinner. I like the idea of checking in midway through.

The author suggests that our genetic makeup may have been determined with the first humans, sort of like a rather infinite series of nesting dolls that get opened with each successive generation. The marriage of siblings, as depicted in the book, is the cause for the birth of a child with a rare genetic anomaly called 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. This would be Cal, who was Calliope until she hit puberty.

What a blow to reach puberty and find out you aren’t at all who you thought you were. There are obviously life-long implications for the sexual life of a hermaphrodite. It made me wonder if I had ever known anyone with this genetic anomaly. It made me remember a visit long ago to an isolated area of Norway, where a branch of my father’s family originated. There were some very strange-looking people living on that farm in the mid-70's. I’m sure this is one of many instances when the admonition not to marry a close relative has been ignored as hormones raged and the choices were few.

I’m anxious to find out about how Cal deals with the genetic hand he is dealt. I’m also wondering if the story is autobiographical. Cal’s description exactly matches the face I see on the back cover of the book.

Have you read Middlesex? If so, what did you think of it?