General info: Novel, published in 2011
Storytelling: 9 - So, first and foremost, I need to point out that Middlesex by Eugenides could very well be my favorite book of all time. I remember reading it first at the tender age of 16, and over the past decade I’ve re-read it multiple times. My original copy (still one of my most prized possessions) is tattered and covered with notes written in glitter gel pen. So, as soon as I heard my beloved Eugenides was finally coming out with another book, I ran to Barnes & Noble the day it came out and dove into the book immediately. I naturally had high hopes for this novel, and approached it excitedly and a bit apprehensively.
In a nutshell, I think Eugenides wanted to craft a clever story about his time in undergrad at Brown in the 1980’s. He centers his story around three main characters: Madeleine Hanna, a wealthy English major from New Jersey who is understood to be very good-looking and a bit of a hopeless romantic; Leonard Bankhead, the enigmatic manic depressive scientist from Portland who starts dating Madeleine halfway through their senior year; and Mitchell Grammaticus, a quirky Religious Studies major from Detroit (this is Eugenides’ first novel not set in Detroit, which is his and my hometown) who decides early on in college that Madeleine is his dream girl, and he is going to marry her. The book starts on graduation day and follows these three individuals during their first year after college, with a heavy dose of flashbacks added in to explain key developments.
Firstly, I loved the way Eugenides weaves a story that’s perfectly ordinary but makes it all seem completely bizarre. (I feel like he did the opposite in Middlesex and made the bizarre seem ordinary, but I need to let go of that). These characters don’t go out and do anything terribly eccentric, save for Mitchell’s time volunteering at a hospital in India, but even that is something I could see many kids straight out of college doing. These play tennis, go out for coffee, argue with each other, and drink too much. I think Eugenides’ biggest challenge was making the typical college experience interesting and fresh, and I think he succeeded. I found myself captivated by the turn of seemingly-mundane events, wondering where all the characters end up in the end.
I also felt myself longing for my own college experience and thinking frequently back on how I’d behaved and felt about the world when I was 21. Eugenides drummed up this nostalgia without hammering me over the head with it. Also, I liked that the novel wasn’t strictly chronological. He leaves the reader guessing a few times about how characters have gotten to certain places. For example, why Leonard and Madeline break up for a period their senior year, or why Madeline is upset with Mitchell when the novel starts. I think incorporating flashbacks can be tricky for an author, but I think Eugenides perfected the timing here.
However, although I was largely captivated by the story, it did drag quite a bit. The beginning section is almost painfully slow, as Madeleine is preparing for her graduation, and it takes far too many pages of preamble to explain the nitty-gritty. The novel finally picked up after a bit, but I spent the first portion of the book pretty worried. Additionally, while he’s plodding along, Eugenides started to get a little too fixated on his college experience and couldn’t stop referencing works and authors that were popular on liberal college campuses in the 80’s. He must have referenced 50+ authors, essays, schools of thought, blah blah blah. I appreciate an artistic sprinkling, but instead this effort detracted from the story made it seem as if he was trying to prove something. Unfortunately, I was disappointed at Eugenides’ lack of focus many times throughout the story.
Writing: 8 – Eugenides is a fantastic writer, and I think most of all I love him for his syntax. He is a big fan of lengthy, cleverly descriptive sentences, and this approach combined with his wit makes me adore him. I credit authors who don’t hold back and write what they want to; there is far too much writing out there today that is catering to the lowest common denominator, just to sell more books. I’d much rather be stimulated and have to perhaps go back and re-read a sentence again, just to appreciate the beauty of the structure or an elegant turn of phrase. Eugenides also has a vast vocabulary that he shows off frequently, and I had to keep dictionary.com pulled up on my Iphone for a fair bit of this novel. I love it when an author presents me with a decent challenge that is just hard enough to engage me.
Also, Eugenides can thread together words completely unlike anyone I’ve read before. The sentence that struck me most in this book was when Mitchell is climbing up the steps into the dome of Sacre Coer in France, Eugenides likens his ascent to liquid being drawn into a syringe. I love me a good, slightly wacky analogy, and Eugenides is loaded with them.
However, similar to my critique for Storytelling, Eugenides gets a little too full of himself in this novel. His overly abundant name dropping and his lagging pace, I think, extend both to the Story and to the Writing. I just couldn’t get over this oversight of his. Perhaps his editor was too enamored from his success from Middlesex that he figured Eugenides should be allowed to do whatever he wants. This book would have almost been absolute perfection if it had just been slimmed down a little bit.
Characters: 8 – Analyzing the character development in this book is a little tricky for me, considering I feel like I am just a few years shy of college. Typically I read books that place me out of my comfort zone and help me to understand a time or place I otherwise wouldn’t, but as I said previously, this story did wonders by making the ordinary seem not so.
Anyway, first and foremost, I was not a huge fan of Madeleine. Although Eugenides tries to make her relatable and interesting, she seems completely boring to me, entitled, lost, and slightly pathetically attached to Leonard. I am usually a fan of flawed characters, but for example, after graduation, the wayward and confused Madeleine agrees to go with Leonard to Cape Cod where he is to complete an internship at a lab. There, Eugenides seems to argue that she is doing it to figure out her next steps, and then lo and behold, she’s lonely and doesn’t have much to do. Now, although I myself and many of my friends were lost souls in the months after college, none of us were lost enough to have willingly packed up and moved to a remote destination with our boyfriend, just for lack of something else to do. I feel like this especially wouldn't be the case for an intelligent Ivy-league graduate. I kind of got the feeling that Eugenides didn’t know quite how to write the female figures in this book. Madeleine was boring to me, and then all the other females (Madeleine’s mother, Madeleine’s sister, Leonard’s mother, Mitchell’s friend’s girlfriend) all seemed like unrealistic and overly-dramatic caricatures. There were a few surprising moments and interesting developments, but for the most part I felt really underwhelmed with how the female characters were crafted.
On the flip side, I loved Mitchell and Leonard and the way they developed through the novel. Mitchell, also confused after graduation (Eugenides is correct to assume that every person, post-graduation, is completely lost and wandering) takes off for Europe and India with his still-in-the-closet friend, mostly to “find himself” and figure out who God is. Sure, I could fault him a little for being in love with Miss Boring, but the endearing way he often puts his foot in his mouth, second guesses himself, stresses about his religious beliefs, and tries too hard to succeed are what made him seem real and relatable. He absolutely struck me as a young guy fresh out of an Ivy League education and someone I might befriend.
Leonard, meanwhile, was portrayed brilliantly as a struggling manic depressive. I applaud Eugenides for bringing this disease so effectively to light, in an age where mental illness is still an oft debated topic and many people are still mostly confused. Eugenides brilliantly gets in the head of someone who sways slowly between glittering mania and all-consuming dark depression. Leonard comes from an extremely dysfunctional family and doesn’t have the means that most Brown students do, so he places added pressure on himself and mistakenly thinks twice throughout the novel that going off his lithium is the way to success. He is complex and ultimately likeable, even though he is a madman and an absolute jerk at times. I think dealing with a serious illness was the necessary spark of weirdness that Eugenides needs in each of his novels, having previously dealt with virgin suicides and being a hermaphrodite. Bravo, monsieur.
Best part: While Mitchell is volunteering for Mother Theresa at a hospital in India, he has somehow gotten away with being exempt from the less desirable tasks. Namely, this means bathing the decrepit and dying patients. Finally, one day, he helps another volunteer bathe an old man who is suffering from a gigantic tumor on his genitals. He carries him to the wash room and helps to bathe, clothe and return him to his bed. Mitchell feels quite accomplished. Shortly thereafter, he passes by a patient who happens to speak English, who confesses that he has to take a shit, just as a non-English speaking volunteer approaches him and starts to lather his face for a shave. Mitchell panics, no one is in sight, and the man starts to scream “I’m shitting!” (still in his bed, mind you). Doing what I imagine anyone would do, and even though he will live to regret it, Mitchell makes his decision and walks out the front door of the hospital, never to return again.
I think the absurdity and humanness of this series of events struck me as brilliant. I also love the collection of details that Eugenides employs. It feels like real life, though it’s totally strange.
Recommend to: College students, who need to understand how bewildering those first few post-grad years are going to be!
Reminded me of: a cross between Tom Woolf’s I Am Charlotte Simmons plus writing by Dave Eggers, but a hundred times better executed and more artfully done than either of those authors could manage.
How I would murder the main character: I would steal Madeleine’s Saab and run her down in the street, preferably while she’s wearing her Kennedy-esque tennis gear.
Sexy parts: Once Leonard decides to start lowering his dosage of lithium on his own and his sex drive returns, he and Madeleine start having lots of sex. Eugenides is descriptive about how frequently and often they are doing it, all over their apartment. There are a few other key sexy moments, including ones involving masturbation and drunken behavior at parties, but I think these are artfully done and not lewd.
To sum it up: Although it misses the mark in a handful of ways, this is a delightful and bizarre tale about a pivotal time.
Overall: 8.5
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