![]() And that his changeling status is the result of a genetic mutation kept alive by incestuous marriages in a tiny village high on Mt. The facts in this case, as Cal tells us on the very first page, are that he was born and raised as a girl but was revealed as a teenager to be a boy, at least in genetic and chromosomal terms. ![]() Jeffrey Eugenides' epic and wondrous new novel, "Middlesex," may contain a daunting array of facts - about the great Ford Motor Company plant in Detroit called River Rouge, about the burning of Smyrna by Turkish troops in 1922 (and the burning of Detroit by angry African-Americans in 1967), about the Nation of Islam, about genetic anomalies and, yes, about hermaphroditism, the headline-grabbing topic that provides the novel with its principal story line - but there still aren't enough of them.Īt the risk of oversimplifying a book so superabundant with characters, history and incident, the story of Cal Stephanides (nee Calliope), the narrator and protagonist of "Middlesex," suggests that while facts can tell us a great deal about life, they are never quite sufficient to the task. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |