"Part Tristram Shandy, part Ishmael, part Holden Caulfield, Cal is a wonderfully engaging narrator... A deeply affecting portrait of one family's tumultuous engagement with the American twentieth century. " --"The New York Times" "Expansive and radiantly generous... Deliriously American. " --"The New York Times Book Review" (cover review) "A towering achievement... [Eugenides] has emerged as the great American writer that many of us suspected him of being. " -"-Los Angeles Times Book Review "(cover review) "A big, cheeky, splendid novel... it goes places few narrators would dare to tread... lyrical and fine. " --"The Boston Globe" "An epic... This feast of a novel is thrilling in the scope of its imagination and surprising in its tenderness. " --"People" "Unprecedented, astounding... The most reliably American story there is: A son of immigrants finally finds love after growing up feeling like a freak. " --"San Francisco Chronicle Book Review" "Middlesex is about a hermaphrodite in the way that Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel is about a teenage boy... A novel of chance, family, sex, surgery, and America, it contains multitudes. " --"Men's Journal" "Wildly imaginative... frequently hilarious and touching. " --"USA Today"