Middlesex

By: Jeffrey Eugenides

Narrated by: Kristoffer Tabori

Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them - along with Callie's failure to develop physically - 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 is a rare genetic mutation - and a guilty secret - that have followed Callie's grandparents from the crumbling Ottoman Empire to Prohibition-era Detroit and beyond, outlasting the glory days of the Motor City, the race riots of 1967, and the family's second migration, into the foreign country known as suburbia. Thanks to the gene, Callie is part girl, part boy. And even though the gene's epic travels have ended, her own odyssey has only begun.

Spanning eight decades - and one unusually awkward adolescence - Jeffrey Eugenides' long-awaited second novel is a grand, original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Audie Award for best unabridged fiction, Middlesex marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America's best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.

Check out more selections from Oprah's Book Club.

©2002 Jeffrey Eugenides (P)2002 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic reviews

Audie Award Winner, Fiction (Unabridged), 2003

"Eugenides proves that he is not only a unique voice in modern literature but also well versed in the nature of the human heart. Highly recommended." (Library Journal )

"Not only are his interpretations of the characters astonishingly credible, but his internalization of the narrative is nothing short of amazing." (Publishers Weekly)

"A towering achievement...a story that manages to be both illuminating and transcendent...[Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer many of us suspected him of being." (Los Angeles Times Book Review)

Beautiful, Bittersweet, Surprising, Complete

What made the experience of listening to Middlesex the most enjoyable?

The narrative flows so naturally and delicately that the complexity of the plot never seems cumbersome and the setting and characters seem to age before your eyes. Jeffrey Eugenides is very talented at this kind of writing, but the scope of Middlesex makes it all the more entrancing.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Middlesex?

Smirna

great story... a little different

Where does Middlesex rank among all the audiobooks you???ve listened to so far?

I gave this book the highest rating because I thought it was just a great story... or two. I enjoyed the ethnic flare, the personal drama, and human fragility. Eugenides weaves a story of 3 generations of a Greek family. This is a story of the old country, immigrations, and assimilation on a cultural as well as personal level. The characters are all wonderfully flawed and trying their best. The story line moves along and is punctuated with wonderful twists and turns. Enjoy!

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

no

Great Book made better by Great Narration!

Loved the way the story unfolded. Accurately intertwining genetics, history, and the torment of being an adolescent with a abnormality. I really enjoyed the book. The Narration was superb.

BRAVO!!!

This book is so wonderful you will only wish there is a big traffic jam on your way to work!

very engaging read

This an engaging, entertaining and moving book. I found myself caring about and identifying with the main character - which is not really what I expected to happen in a book about a hermaphrodite. The book is entertaining and meaningful at the same time, with a good mix of dialog and narration, introspection and action. The consistent presence of themes of family, culture, identity, and the need to belong help unify the book and give it a universal appeal.

Kristoffer Tabori's narration was wonderful - among the best I have heard.

My First Audiobook!

This was my first Audiobook and I feel I may have been spoiled! The narrator was captivating and the story splendid. I am delving into this new world to make an otherwise boring commute to a new job more enjoyable. I didn't know that I would dread pulling into the parking lot at work or look for ways to make the drive longer to hear more of the story!

I highly recommend this story!

Riveting prose

Where does Middlesex rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The best. The story is interesting and the prose is beautiful. The voice acting is the best I've ever heard.

What other book might you compare Middlesex to and why?

The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay. They both tell the story of 20th century America and deal with issues of sexuality.

Have you listened to any of Kristoffer Tabori’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

If you could take any character from Middlesex out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Cal. I would like to see if I could detect anything peculiar about him.

Any additional comments?

The author's prose often gallops and adapts well to an audio performance.

This is a great life story. Read it and understand

I knew a male and a female like this. Complicated to others but not to me. I wasn't sure why things went the way they went but when you listen you will learn the all out things people did and still do to come to America. I know it wasn't easy, yet the book moves fast and makes it so entertaining that you realize so little impact on this person. Yet I saw it first hand. I'll bet the medical and science interest were just relentless and probably continue to this day. You'll come to know that children came from such choices and the choices those children made to fit in were a great deal more than the rest of us. Thanks to the author Jeffrey Eugenides I now understand more why a husband and wife looked more like brother and sister and why the children were...well you'll find out. Thanks for such a good read. Buy this book and Middlesex will take you to a whole new level of what it means to survive your birth and sex.

Good story, weird recording.

The story is wonderful, and the narration was great, but the music at the chapter breaks was very distracting and overlapped too much with the audio of the book. A small annoyance for such a great book.

Very interesting book

This is one of the best books I've listened to through Audible. I highly recommend it. It really gave you a feel for Cal's condition as well as the history of America as the story unfolds.