Need some help from someone who's read 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides

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I'm nearly halfway through this terrific book, but I've run across what seems to read as a massive plot flaw/typo.

I don't want to give any spoilers, so if anyone has great recall of this book and wouldn't mind setting me straight, PM me.

I'm confounded.
 

AmyBA

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I'm reading it now for a book group and am almost half-way through. If you want to PM me about it, feel free. I don't mind spoilers so much when I'm reading the stuff for work.
 

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Okay, sent off the question. Nichola, you're a fruitloop.

But I am stunning in my fancy brown mop, I must say...
 

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Ah... you know what? I got it. I'm all sorted out.

:)

Nevermind.

Nichola, you're still breakfast cereal, but at least my book makes sense now.
 

Elektra

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Okay, now I have to know what it was. Can you PM me?
 

aruna

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Oh, please don't do this to me! I am dying to know what it's all about and I've read the book.

Why not just write SPOILER in big red bold letters and then share the point with us who have read it. Those who haven't read it can keep off.
 

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T'were nothing 'cept a tangle in my own thought thread. There was a sentence about his maternal grandfather and my mind would not draw the family tree properly.

I figured it out before two lovely AWers got to me with their answers. Which is pathetic, considering I noodled it (and ranted about it) for fifteen minutes before I made this post.

Sometimes I screw it all up.

At any rate, this is a terrific book.
 

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Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

Finished this today and it's one of the best books I've ever read. Absolutely brilliant and, for a change, it's completely clear to me why a Pulitzer was in the offing. Just genius.

Eugenides does what the authors of my alltime favorites have done: love their story and loved the words that tell it just as much.

Swoon, swoon, swoon.
 

Will Lavender

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Strangely, I never could get into Middlesex.

I absolutely LOVED The Virgin Suicides. One of the most brilliant things I've ever read.

But I tried Middlesex twice and couldn't get past page 50 either time. My wife and I decided a couple of years ago to read the same book so we could talk about it as we went along. We decided on Middlesex. Both of us quit on it about two chapters in. My wife hated it so that it became, for awhile, an in-joke between us.

I'm not big on epic family histories, maybe. I don't know. It was just me, I'm sure. I'll get it someday.
 

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I just finished this one and I have to agree with the above poster that it took a long while for me to get into it. It started so slowly I had to force myself to read it. I don't know what possessed Eugenides to put in such extensive back story for his tale. I don't think it was necessary to appreciate the true meat of the story itself.

I found he was very loose with form in this one. He used an omnipotent narrator who wasn't actually omnipotent all the time, seemingly just when it suited his purposes. He also played around with tenses, sometimes shifting from past to present within the same paragraph and I found that distracting.

Overall, the story was fascinating, but, at times, I struggled with his technique.
 

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It's funny how that works. I didn't read the backstory as 'backstory'. For me, I got about three books in one and the story of the grandparents and the parents and the main character, as well as some history of racial tensions and social upheaval in Detroit in the fifties and sixties was interwoven just beautifully.

It really worked for me.
 

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I loved it but I remember being disappointed by the end. I can't remember why anymore, it's a few years since I read it.
I too saw no backstory, only a family saga.