Middlesex
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season546 pages, about 11 hours: the length of 1.7 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbFive blogs and comments describe losing interest or quitting during the family backstory of Calliope’s grandparents and parents.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 20 reviews from critics and book blogs, one credits the plot and 11 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesSalon expected comparisons to Franzen’s The Corrections, and the book blog Vulpes Libris names One Hundred Years of Solitude.
The case for it
on the Detroit setting
“a social novel about Detroit, perhaps the most symbolic of American cities”
Andrew O'Hehir · Salon, 2002 on Cal’s transformation
“Cal is so engaging and his transformation so intriguing”
Adam Begley · The New York Observer, 2002 on Chapter Eleven
“his continual references to his own brother as ‘Chapter Eleven.’”
four stars · a book blog on Cal’s narration
“a wonderfully engaging narrator: long-winded, perhaps, but capable of discoursing with equal verve and wit”
Michiko Kakutani · The New York Times, 2002
The case against
on the wait for Calliope
“at page 215, when Calliope is born and takes center stage at last”
John Homans · New York Magazine, 27 August 2002 on Cal’s own story
“he rushes through it, glossing over potentially rich and provocative questions”
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow · The Brooklyn Rail, 2003 on the opening
“has a painfully slow-going start, and I was neither engaged nor intrigued”
three stars · a book blog on Cal’s characterization
“Cal felt too much like a symbol rather than a person to me”
a book blog
