Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002
A Greek-American family's secret history runs from a burning city to Detroit's factories, told by a narrator who is both inside and outside his own story.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit in 1960 to Greek-American parents; Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Feels like identity, family and wonder.
The words we have for feeling are too simple for what we feel.
Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. Books by Jeffrey Eugenides
Authors with a similar feel
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
BookFeed is a feed of real passages from real books. It learns what moves you and finds your next book.
Open BookFeedFree, no sign-up.