Great book, if you're a sexual pervert. Highlights: incongruous genitals; incest.
Actually very good. Unique, except for the chatty narrative, which sometimes wanders out into crisp, beautiful prose. And I'm not a fan of the epic multi-generational family saga thing, to be honest. No one investigates a murder. No cowboys have an adventure in Mexico.
A young girl finds out she's a boy. There. That's it.
Still I'm compelled to explore Eugenides' slimmer debut, The Virgin Suicides, before moving along with my promised reading list.
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4 comments:
I'm confused...How does she find the time to explore her gender identity while also having saloon gunfights?
i liked this book too
The gunfights are a metaphor, duh. The explosions as well.
I guess I'm about 5 months late here, but I disagree. I liked this book a lot and thought it was maily about the experience of being an immigrant (or the child or grandchild of immigrants) in America.
Not that the incest and incongruous gender roles are merely incidental to the story. I think a big part of belonging to an immigrant family is feeling like a perpetual outsider or a freak and a weirdo, so it may be partially a metaphor for that.
Maybe not entirely metaphor though. There are definitely some cultures where it was once common for cousins to marry and have kids with developmental disabilities/abnormalities. Which I suppose is a pretty shameful legacy to live with here in modern day America.
On a brighter note, I really like the scenes where he describes the bewilderment of the grandparents trying to navigate life in Detriot - they are so poignant and funny. Don't you like how Desdemona thinks you're supposed to indicate your bus stop by shouting 'Sonnamabiche' at the driver? Hilarious.
There are also some nice allusions to Greek myth, which is what really makes this a classic, worthy of collegiate thesis writing.
In conclusion, this book is awesome and anyone who writes a bad review about it is probably just sore about their incongruous genitals. (your blog is the first hit on Google for 'incongruous genitals' by the way)
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