I think this is the book I recommend to customers most regularly, it's the book I wish I hadn't read so I could have the experience of reading it for the first time again! Its follows the heritage and life of Cal/Calliope, a Greek-American descended from a brother/sister marriage who is born intersex. It discusses the American dream, and ideas of gender identity and the nuances of sexuality, as well as family relationships, hardships, falling in love and realising oneself . It has enough strange-ness (the traits the characters are given are endearingly quirky) without falling into the all too easy trap of seeming to twee. Though the characters are specific and distinctive, they experience trials which everybody will be able to empathise with. Eugenides writes so beautifully, and the novel is easily read at the same time as holding complexity. His other works, The Virgin Suicides and The Marriage Plot are equally worth a read, but it's Middlesex which is the stand out for me.

Being British, it can be easy to dismiss the literary aspirations of other territories. It is akin to a selfish teenage phase, petulant and ignorant and it has taken me an age to ignore the ignorant inward assertion that ‘we’ have the Booker. This foolishness is highlighted when considering the 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning ‘Middlesex’. Many of us are aware of the books broad content. It is about a hermaphrodite. One blessed with both boy and girl parts. In my limited experience this revelation is met with either fascination, horror or both, a willingness to try it or a resolve to never touch it with anyone’s barge pole. A mistake, for sure. It has also been known to contain many of Eugenides own fears and musings, biographical in a way, although the author himself is not and has never been anything other than a ‘one-piece’. The themes and situations are in many ways universal to us all. The novel itself has been widely acclaimed, deeply studied but most importantly broadly enjoyed. It is this enjoyment I with to focus on. I could not get enough of this book. It is a book in which to devour slowly, carefully and with mindless consideration. Much can be learnt from it; American and early 20th century European history, industrial America, race relations, Greek mythology as well as how superbly crafted a contemporary American novel can be. It can be read as if it was a memoir, although it is obvious in many places that the narrator knows too much. I cannot recommend this enough; it is rich like Christmas pudding and double cream and is peppered with humour, loss and joy. All of it, from the first paragraph to the last sentence is marvellously and stunningly written. A must read.

Writing this review makes me a little sad. Coming off the back of The Virgin Suicides, I had really high hopes for this book and, as a non-binary person, I was really looking forward to seeing where my own experiences aligned with the gender journey of Cal. Unfortunately, I found it a little gender reductionist, offering a susprisingly outdated view on gendered experiences. For example, at one point Cal remarks that in some ways he will always be a daughter – because his mother likes to discuss her problems with him? While it has the potential to be an interesting statement on the emotional labour performed by daughters, it doesn't seem to be presented as such – and in combination with Cal's gender-fluidity being a by-product of incest, and with the only trans-healthcare professional we see being presented as an unprofessional, morally dubious, unskilled cook, I found myself leaving the book with the urge to check the publication date. There is also a lot of racism within the book, though its much more explicitally condemned in-narrative. That being said, the story of the family and their intergenerational trauma is very compelling and the characters are very easy to love, so if you go into the book with a hankering for only that (or if you're cisgendered) the book is absolutely worth a read. If you're looking for a complex discussion of gendered experiences though, I'd maybe look elsewhere.