I loved this book. I liked how thought-provoking it was, but also just that it was a tremendous story.*
A little background: our narrator is named Cal (formerly Calliope^), and we know this from the very beginning, so I'm not giving anything away (although there are some definite spoilers below). The important thing is how Cal gets from beginning to end, a tale that puts the journey front and center. I loved how on many levels it is such a typical coming of age story even as our character deals with something that fundamentally affects his gender, a facet of ourselves most of us never even realize we take for granted.
^ I will refer to Calliope/Cal throughout this post based on what gender s/he had at the point in the story when the events in question occur, so expect some name flipping.
I think Eugenides crafts certain elements of the story to help ground Cal's experiences, to keep him from feeling too alien and unidentifiable. It's helpful, but I wonder at times if it is too heavy handed. For example, when Calliope begins to have a sexual relationship with the Object, there are pieces of text designed specifically to remind us that their sexual entanglement is both strange and entirely typical.
So that was our love affair. Wordless, blinkered, a nighttime thing, a dream thing. There were reasons on my side for this as well. Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which meant not much light at all. Besides, that's the way it goes in adolescence. You try things out in the dark. You get drunk or stoned and extemporize. Think back to your backseats, your pup tents, your beach bonfire parties. ... It's a kind of fugue state anyway, early sex. Before the routine sets in, or the love. Back when groping is largely anonymous. Sandbox sex. p. 386I like that this text is in there, that Cal (telling us the story as an adult) addresses the reader, asking us to recall our own experiences and then compare them with what we're reading. But I also wonder what it means that this is necessary. Is it Cal's attempt to force "normalcy" (and therefore somehow validate?) what is fundamentally a unique coming of age story? Or is Eugenides' trying to make Cal's tale relatable to the reader? A little of both? In either case, what does it mean that this type of justification needs to be there? That we are potentially made uncomfortable by the need for a space that accommodates an intersex person?
I actually think that this passage made Cal's story seem more unusual because it highlighted it. The aspect of the text that made it universal for me was that the sex in question is hot. It's written with passion and detail and captures the emotional turmoil of first sexual encounters. It's erotic without being exotic.
There's another aspect of this story that at first seems unrelated to the above, but give me a second. Eugenides doesn't start our story with Cal, he starts the story with his paternal grandparents who, it turns out, are siblings. This part of the story is told ostensibly because we are tracing the gene that led to Cal's intersexuality, a recessive gene that is highly unlikely to ever be expressed without the interference of inbreeding. I wondered about this while I was reading because it's unnecessary. The inbreeding that actually resulted in Cal's condition was a result of his parents being first cousins. The fact that his paternal grandparents were siblings is irrelevant, as only one of them needed to pass on the gene that would produce his alpha-5-reductase deficiency. The other copy he received from his mother. So I kept wondering, why start there? Why begin so long before you need to? The answer is so obvious that I'm a little embarassed it took me a while to figure it out - because it's an epic, stupid. Because it is, in a sense, a very ordinary (and therefore extraordinary) family, immigrant, American tale.
His grandparents' romance has a magical feel to it. They fall in love in Greece, in a tiny village on top of a mountain. There is Desdemona's emotional connection to the silkworms, her attempts to dress up the only other marriagable women in the village to appeal to her brother to much comedic effect. It's very much like a fairy tale with a dark twist. Their flight to the United States allows their rebirth from siblings to married couple and they hope to forget their transgression, but it is in a sense revisited upon them in their own emotional dysfunctionality and in the intersexuality of Cal. His own story, his transformation from female to male, is a mirror of the story of Greeks becoming Americans, of the past giving way to the present.
We see this theme repeatedly, not the least of which is in Desdemona's spoon, which she uses to predict the sex of each new progeny. She predicts that Cal will be a boy, but her son rejects this, saying they are having a girl. How does he know? Because "It's science, Ma" (p. 6). The old way of understanding the world has been replaced with the new way, but is it better? Does Dr. Luce really represent the best we can do? I hope not. (It's also interesting that Desdemona & her spoon were genetically right.)
Finally, I spend a lot of time thinking about authors' choices about their stories and characters. I find it fascinating that Cal says he never felt uncomfortable being a girl.
Unlike other so-called male pseudo-hermaphrodites who have been written about in the press, I never felt out of place being a girl. I still don't feel entirely at home among men. Desire made me cross over to the other side, desire and the facticity of my body. (p. 479)I wonder why Eugenides chose to make Cal unusual in this respect. Is it because he wants Cal's journey to remain in close parallel with the immigrant tale in which we can be both comfortable and uncomfortable in our new land and in the place we come from? I also wondered if it's possible that more "pseudo-hermaphrodites" feel like Cal than we know. I wonder if saying this, that he could have lived out his life either way, is even more transgressive than being intersex in the first place. We shy away from anything that could be used to bolster the "it's a choice" argument in conversations about gender and sexuality / sexual preference as though those types of arguments have any validity to begin with. It shouldn't matter if it's a choice because it would still be none of your damned business. Regardless of that, we tow the line of biology because it's a weapon we can use to fight against those who would deny the rights of individuals because of their particular biology / choice combo. Writing Cal this way makes us ask ourselves more questions about him and about our own assumptions than we might otherwise.
Which made me wonder just how much we take for granted in constructing and reading characters who are more traditionally male and female. How many assumptions do we make when we decide that someone is male or female? How many possibilities are closed off?
Ultimately, I liked this book because each time I put it down, my mind was racing, thinking about the characters, their lives, their personalities. They felt so real, so interesting, and yet so much larger than life. It's the kind of book I'll read again 3 years from now and enjoy just as much, if not more.
* As always, these are my thoughts on the book, and it's obvious that there are many more informed things out there written by people with degrees and stuff. I feel the need to reiterate this because it won a Pulitzer, for cripes' sake.
Followup: After writing this, I looked at a review someone wrote - I can't even remember where, and they said that the only part of the book they didn't like was Cal's time as a runaway, when he was working in the club and living with Zora because it was dark and didn't seem to fit the good humor and warmth of the rest of the story. I think they're wrong, but for a couple of reasons. First, I found Calliope's time in the boarding school as incredibly tense and uncomfortable to read, so I don't think this was the only part of the book that was a bit darker. Second, I'm sure none of us really enjoys the fact that intersex individuals are treated as freaks, etc., but it felt like a very realistic part of Cal's trajectory. Additionally, Cal's relationship with Zora was incredibly warm and caring. Interesting that people find that part of the book inherently dark/distressing/dirty. I've been reading a lot of blogs about sex work/ers lately, and I think the characterization of this as a "dark" part of the book has more to do with setting and people's assumptions about that setting than the actual tone or plot of that portion of the novel.
* This counts toward the Gender Identity & Expression Challenge, Chunkster Challenge, and 100+ Challenge.
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