oh Jeffrey Eugenides, how i adore thee. i’ve read all of your novels, though all wonderful, middlesex is one of the better novels i’ve read this year. i thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it and i especially loved that Jeffrey went out on a limb.
it isn’t every-day that you see a book about an incestuous Greek family with a hermaphrodite child as a byproduct of said incest. middlesex follows the Stephanides family all the way from the little town of Smyrna to America. the story of three generations, two of which are incestuous, for the record.
as a slight side note, Stephanides and Eugenides both have that Greek ring to them, don’t they? it made me wonder how much of this story is true and how much is well-researched fiction. Eugenides himself says that he enjoys “amazing and incredibly fanciful [stories] but true, the kind of story I like.”
so i went ahead and read up on Eugenides. he’s married and has a child with Karen Yamauchi. in the book, Cal ends up with Julie Kikuchi. those sure do sound alike to me. and the child thing can easily be explained through adoption, etc, etc, etc.
much like Cal, Eugenides is very private about his personal life and really, aside from book signings, Jeffrey doesn’t kiss up to the press. we don’t really know much about him aside from where he went to school and where he currently teaches and lives.
is Eugenides writing his story through Cal/Calliope? no.
how do i know this for sure? have i asked him myself? i wish, but no.
folks who have 5-alpha-reductase deficiency like Cal has in the book don’t bald because they don’t have very much of the DHT hormone which causes follicular miniaturization and thereby balding.
Eugenides is definitely balding.
ironically, photo by Karen Yamauchi.
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Filed under: Jeffrey Eugenides, Literature Reviews , book review, books, jeffrey eugenides, middlesex
