Middlesex

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, is two stories wrapped up in one novel. The first is a tale of generations of a Greek immigrant family as they settle in Detroit and make a life. The other story is that of Cal, the grandchild of the immigrants. When Cal is born, the elderly doctor at the delivery does not notice the baby's ambiguous genitalia. The parents name their child Calliope and raise her as a girl. When Calliope becomes a teenager and doesn't physically mature, everyone believes she is a late bloomer. It is not until Calliope has an accident and the emergency room doctor notices something that the family takes Callie to a specialist.

But the story starts in western Turkey in 1922. Cal's grandparents are Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, brother and sister living in a small village in Asia Minor. When the area is filled with turmoil, they escape on a ship to America. On the voyage, they transition from brother and sister to husband and wife. They manage to keep their true relationship secret from everyone except their cousin Sourmalina. This secret is a tragic flaw that ends up affecting their grandchild Cal. The flaw takes the phyical form of a genetic defect due to inbreeding, but encompasses the divided life of immigrants as well as Cal's split male/female nature.

Lefty and Desdemona move in with Sourmalina and her husband Jimmy Zizmo in Detroit. Their relationship isn't perfect, but it is good enough to produce two children. Their son Milton ends up marrying Tessie, the daughter of Sourmalina and Jimmy and his own second cousin. But their relationship is at the cost of Father Mike, an Orthodox priest who was in love with Tessie. Mike is resentful of Milton and the belief that his money helped steal Tessie from him. The whole family is like a Greek drama, with dark secrets and desires.

The story is narrated by Cal as an adult intersex man. He describes his parents' and grandparents' life as well as their thoughts and feelings. This transition into omniscience helps drive the mythological aspect of the story. It is also crucial in narrating Cal's life growing up as a girl. There are flash forwards to Cal's current relationship with a woman, so this keeps us grounded in the knowledge that Cal is currently a man who transformed from a girl. This brings an interesting perspective on Callie's girlhood, even when it isn't explicit it comes out in the style. When he starts trying to behave as a man he remarks at one point that it is not so different from a boy growing up and acting like a man. This insight of the interwoven nature of the sexes is typical of the novel.

When Callie is fourteen she starts to develop feelings for her best friend, an intriguing girl referred to as the Obscure Object. She does not know how to deal with these feelings, not suspecting her true nature. She lets her friend's brother Jerome have sex with her but the sudden pain starts questions, and the truth is soon revealed. In the crisis that follows, Callie must determine her fate, with her dual nature pulling her both ways.

I felt the first half of the book was slow as it builds to Callie's birth, but the stories of the family members have their own fascination. There's the speakeasy that Lefty opens during Prohibition; Desdemona's silk work with the Black Panthers; the Detroit race riots. The silk worms serve as a link to the family's past in Asia Minor, but also as a symbol of fragility and transformation. Milton's beautiful and sexy seduction of Tessie involves playing his clarinet against her body. On a mystical note, Tessie's and Desdemona's attempts to choose and divine Cal's sex in the womb seem to be an attempt to force the hand of fate, which backfires when Cal's sex finally reveals itself. The novel is enjoyable as a story of a family through the years and the personal journey of a young girl's transformation into a man. The characters are fun to watch as they change and grow and clash and love one another. The author blends several themes to make the novel work on many levels. A-

The Lost Books of the Odyssey

The Odyssey has been one of my favorite stories for a long time. I've always enjoyed the fantastic tales, then I appreciated the mythic structure and rich background. Lately I've come to an appreciation of the poem's later stages as Odysseus spends years with Calypso and returns home as a beggar to scope out the situation at home. The whole story has such rich layers from fascinating material. I've occasionally wondered what other stories there might be of Odysseus. Dan Simmons' Ilium was a great story that used the material from The Iliad and The Odyssey and made a totally new science fiction work.

I had read a review of The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason's debut novel, so when I found it at the library I snatched it up. First off, it's not really a novel so much as a series of short short stories. There's no overall structure to the book. Instead each story looks at the character of Odysseus or one of the related characters and presents a different view. There is the story about Odysseus coming home and finding the island of Ithaca deserted. Another tells of his return as a beggar and warning that the master will be home soon, and returning the next day as the true king of Ithaca to find that all the suitors have been killed and Penelope playing the part of the dutiful wife (though Odysseus knows better). In a masterpiece of irony, one story finds Odysseus at Troy faced with a man who claims to be him, including knowledge that only the true king of Ithaca would know. He sends the man away with some food and gold and the parting advice that perhaps he is better of being without any ties or responsibilities. When he finally returns home after years of war and wandering the sea, he finds the same man in his house with his wife. The man sends him off with the same gifts and parting advice.

One story tells the story of a sympathetic Polyphemus, who suffers blinding at the hands of a nefarious captain. Another tells of Telemachus as he waits for the return of his father and witnesses a great wave that washes over Ithaca. The visit to Circe's island is retold as we watch Odysseus make the decision to join the witch in bed after realizing all his men have been killed.

Some of the stories twist around in a sort of meta story. One tells of Odysseus as he leaves the Trojan War to become a storyteller and hears the stories of his adventures grow. Another piece describes how the Iliad grew out of the elaborations of a chess manual.

I enjoyed reading the further adventures of one of the greatest mythic heroes. These stories are great variations on a theme. Achilles is recast as a golem made of mud. Agamemnon becomes a tyrant who demands the secret of the universe. The final piece shows Odysseus retracing his steps as an old man, finding the world changed and feeling much smaller. One story has Odysseus fall into the sea on the way home only to be plucked out by Agamemnon on the way to Troy, and he is forced to relive the whole war again. While the book has no central structure, the themes are built and woven and remade into a vast new look at the ancient Greek myths. The book is both new and old at the same time, quite a feat with the oldest stories around. A