Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides (London: Bloomsbury, 2002)

“You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there’s it’s only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you’re time-travelling. In this life we grow backwards.”

A big, bold, hilarious saga that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Middlesex follows three generations of the Stephanides family from 1920s Greece to Detroit in the swinging 60s to contemporary Berlin. The narrator of this epic tale is Calliope, whose grandparents’ unusual union meant that she was born a girl but, thanks to a rare genetic mutation, grows into a man – Cal, now 41, is recording his/her life story for science and posterity. Superbly detailed descriptions of people and places make them feel incredibly real and specific, but the themes explored by this imaginative book (race, war, religion, sexuality, gender, the immigrant experience) are universal.

Read an interview with Jeffrey Eugenides by Jonathan Safran Foer here.

Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson (New York: Farrar, Strouss and Giroux, 2004)

“You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”

Set in a small town in Iowa in 1956, and taking the form of dairy entries to his young son, Gilead tells the story of Reverend John Ames, a preacher in his 70s who knows he doesn’t have long to live. Ames mixes tales of everyday life, memories, and reflections about God with the history of his father and grandfather, both also preachers, during the American Civil War and WWI. Although slow-paced, this is a powerful book, revealing the old man’s deep religious beliefs and profound love for his family through simple prose and gentle humour.  Deserving winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.



Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook here.