|
|
Therapist Directory: Find a Psychologist, Find a Therapist, Find a Marriage Counselor
PSYCHOLOGY TOPICS
Selected topics in psychology
and mental health.
|
|
|
|
|
THE THERAPIST PSYCHOLOGIST BOOK STORE
 | |
 View Larger |
Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club) By Jeffrey Eugenides ( Picador )
Release Date: 2002-06-05
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $15.00
Price: $10.20
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|  Add to Cart |
|
|
Product Description
A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.
|
Amazon.com Review
"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." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory. Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor: Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." … I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons
|
|
 amazing!
this book is just amazing in creativity and style. Story of many generations and untold family secrets.
|
Epic and Fabulous! ( charisse_mitsumi )
I couldn't put this book down...it's been a while since I've read such an epic and interesting novel. I highly recommend this book.
|
 Just OK ( astronerdical )
This book was just OK, felt sort of "put on" at times, but it was a nice quick read. Recommended for light reading material in between denser books.
|
 A Hellenistic Forrest Gump
In case people think the comparison is meant as a compliment, it's not. This book had the same annoying way of coming up with coincidences that put people in the middle of "supposedly" historical occurrences. Just as I couldn't finish watching the movie, I couldn't finish reading this book. The characters and events were bland, and the magical realism didn't work.
I couldn't understand why this book is so popular until I started reading the reviews and found out that it's an Oprah's Book Club selection. The copy I have doesn't have her logo. The logo is for me is an automatic indication that a book is going to be cheesy and poorly written.
If you want to read excellent Greek tragedies about an incestuous relationship and its result, I suggest reading "Oedipus" and "Antigone" by Sophocles.
|
DIsappointing
I purchased the book because of the Big O stamp of approval and found myself struggling to get through it.The history was somewhat interesting but the characters never seemed real to me, or maybe not compelling. I left it at the vacation rental, maybe someone else will enjoy it but I wont takes Oprah's recommendations so seriously now.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Addiction
