There have been many posts on The Bookhive List, and there will be many more, but if I had to narrow it down to a top-five type situation, Middlesex would sit comfortably on that list. It is the essential novel in my life. The prose is lyrical and beautiful, the structure is complex and rewarding, and the characters are so alive.
As if that weren't enough of a good reason to love and admire it, the bulk of the novel takes place in Detroit and Grosse Pointe, my hometown. I live only a few blocks from Middlesex (the street), I was married in the chapel at the girls' school attended by Cal, and perhaps most importantly and most ephemerally, I understand Eugenides' obsession with the place. To outsiders, it's a wealthy suburb of Detroit (a totally shallow mis-characterization, by the way); to me, and apparently to Eugenides as well, it's an incredibly magical place that is utterly haunted by its own history. It's a place that demands narrative -- I always joke that someday I'll write my "Grosse Pointe novel," if only because there are so many incredible stories and characters in this place.
Eugenides has unfairly been the focus of feminist criticism of the publishing industry -- critics have argued that if his books were written by women, they wouldn't get the same positive/academic attention, and that's possibly true. But even so, I'm not going to begrudge a male author for writing the female perspective so skillfully -- I will take Eugenides over John Updike, Philip Roth, or Jonathon Franzen any day. His ability to play with gender and to write simultaneously gendered and ambiguous perspectives is masterful, and the obvious influence of Jane Austen on his writing is endearing.
The Bookhive List is a weekly recommendation of my all-time favorite, must-read books.
