Issyvoo

“Middlesex” isn’t really about Calliope/Cal’s shifting sexual identity, as important a role as it plays in the story. The transfiguration of a child from girl to boy, after all, is only one of the marvelous things that happens in the Stephanides family history…

Gore Vidal once joked that the advantage of bisexuality was that it doubled your chances of a date on a Saturday night. By extension, hermaphrodites could be said to have the third option of a good night in on their own. But in this epic novel narrated by an American born with twin-set genitals, Jeffrey Eugenides silences such cheap jokes with a rich comedy of his own.