Middlesex
I have to say that the dodgy facial hair sculpture and large-necked skivvy didn't really mean he wrote a bad book. It was extravagantly baroque in conception, covering three generations of a family's history, two wars, race riots, the Depression, urban decay, white flight, the sexual revolution and a very confused young person who finds out she isn't actully a girl. (Maybe the skivvy was a pointer to this complexity. I'm trying to remember if it was the same photo on the back of much more straightforward and subtle by comparison The Virgin Suicides but I can't find my copy.)
Not that Middlesex was a PERFECT book. It was probably 150 pages longer than it needed to be. (Do American publishers pay by the word?) I spent the final hundred pages wondering whether a character had died when I wasn't paying attention only to have a tacked-on explanation by the narrator saying he'd decided to concentrate on something else during those chapters. A lot of the symbolism was very obvious - eg the young androgene's family moves to a house called "Middlesex". (Get it?) There's a lot of stuff about silkworms metamporphosising and a character with several different identities. And a few too many coincidences. And this strange probably unecessary section in the middle about a particular teacher teaching advanced English and making the class stage a Greek drama so that a minor character can drop dead. Um, in retrospect it seemed really odd. But I kept on reading. Right to the end. In the middle of the night.
I realised that I'd read an extract in a New Yorker a few years ago. I'd actually thought it was a short story or a memoir rather than an extract until I came across it verbatim in the novel. The bits I'd vaguely remembered were about the exquisite agony of being 14 and confused. These were really well done and made me cringe inwardly with a bit of recognition both times. (After all, I think everyone has been 14 and not sure they fit in for whatever reason) ick!
So, um, I'm going to get past the quasi-goatee and hope he doesn't wear skivvies every day.
Not that Middlesex was a PERFECT book. It was probably 150 pages longer than it needed to be. (Do American publishers pay by the word?) I spent the final hundred pages wondering whether a character had died when I wasn't paying attention only to have a tacked-on explanation by the narrator saying he'd decided to concentrate on something else during those chapters. A lot of the symbolism was very obvious - eg the young androgene's family moves to a house called "Middlesex". (Get it?) There's a lot of stuff about silkworms metamporphosising and a character with several different identities. And a few too many coincidences. And this strange probably unecessary section in the middle about a particular teacher teaching advanced English and making the class stage a Greek drama so that a minor character can drop dead. Um, in retrospect it seemed really odd. But I kept on reading. Right to the end. In the middle of the night.
I realised that I'd read an extract in a New Yorker a few years ago. I'd actually thought it was a short story or a memoir rather than an extract until I came across it verbatim in the novel. The bits I'd vaguely remembered were about the exquisite agony of being 14 and confused. These were really well done and made me cringe inwardly with a bit of recognition both times. (After all, I think everyone has been 14 and not sure they fit in for whatever reason) ick!
So, um, I'm going to get past the quasi-goatee and hope he doesn't wear skivvies every day.
posted by Mary Bennet | 3:00 pm
3 Comments:
I read The Virgin Suicides and quite liked it. But since we moved into our little house, storage is at a premium and I've had to do the previously unthinkable and cull books. Once you start, it's surprisingly easy and you can find yourself getting a little reckless. Anyway, TVS was among the few hundred books that were deemed not worth holding on to.
Oh Hazel, culling!?! Actually I can't talk. I've finally been persuaded that five bookshelves is quite enough thank you and, to make space for new books, I've been sending most of my potboilers out on permanent loan, donating dud books to charity and hiding some I can't quite make my mind up about at work.
Put them up in the shed. If you don't remember you have them, or don't miss them, well...
(I know, culling, it's such a crime.)
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