An epic read. This novel tracks a mutant gene through three generations of the Stephanides family, until it finds itself expressed in Calliope, our narrator. As the book opens we find Callie is in fact a pseudohermaphrodite, equally male and female, who has been raised as a girl, and at the age of 14 finds herself identifying as a man. It is the middle-aged Cal, now a diplomat working in Berlin, who takes us back to the mountain village in Greece where his grandparents were born, through their incredible escape to America, to a world war, the births of Cal's parents, the Detroit race riots, the tempering of his grandparents' love and the budding of his parents', through the LSD haze of the 60's, the creation of the Intersex Society of North America, all the way up to 2005, where Cal is still finding himself adjusting to the reality of his rogue gene.
What is wonderful about this book is that the family history and Cal's story of coming to recognize her rare condition could each stand alone; that they are interconnected is a thrilling bonus. Eugenides has an amazing ability to write characters so real that I found myself wondering if the Stephanides family is simply his own, and he himself is Cal. Perhaps for this reason, the children's hospital in Halifax referred to the novel as a source when deciding how to treat an intersexual infant. This is one of the only novels written about intersexuality, and I think Eugenides did a wonderful job picking apart the overwhelming intricacies of one small instance of it.
A solid nine paternalistic doctors out of ten
Steph
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