Middlesex

Jeffrey Eugenides


Bloomsbury, 2003,
£7.99, 544 pages
ISBN 0 747 56162 1
Rating:

I was born twice: first as a baby girl in January 1960; and then as a teenage boy, in an emergency room ... Specialised readers may have come across me in Dr Peter Luce's study: Gender identity in 5-alpha reductase pseudohermaphrodites, published in 1975. Or maybe you have seen my photograph . . ."

Callie or Cal Stephanides is a hermaphrodite, who is the recipient of a gene passed down through three generations. The author, Eugenides, thoroughly researched this condition and used it as a backbone for his fictional work. While a student at a girls' school in Detroit, Callie finds herself drawn to a chain smoking strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting, and a passion subsequently develops between them. This, coupled with her failure to develop, leads Callie to suspect that she is different to the other girls.

Callie's fate had been sealed in 1922 when her grandparents were forced to flee to the United States from Greece by the invading Turkish army. During their journey to the United States, the Stephanides made a rash decision. Acting on an incestuous passion, they launched their new life by declaring themselves not brother and sister—but husband and wife.

Despite its beginning, as the novel goes along it becomes more realistic, and delves into the psychological makeup of Callie. Each chapter takes on a new historical or emotional terrain, and tries to take into account the modern biomedical revolution. The story begins with a medical concept—a genetic mutation that affects the fifth chromosome—and then develops into a remarkable journey of self discovery and philosophy. It questions if the inner self is static, even in light of drastic outer changes, and takes a look at how our inner selves are formed.

Middlesex makes fascinating reading for medics. It looks at the interaction of medicine with everyday life, which focuses on Callie struggling to choose between being raised a woman, while physically being a man. Also outlined in the story is the complex interplay of genetic make up and environment—education, disease, and culture—and how they influence personality development. Middlesex ultimately concludes that understanding the relationship of nature and nurture is crucial for both understanding a patient's behaviour, and for discovering ways to cultivate a healthy patient-doctor relationship.