Friday Books - Middlesex

Oh yay, it's Friday. Time to share things bookish.

At Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader, you share the first line, and  a few thoughts about the book.

 Here's the beginning of the book I'm featuring today.

A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of "The Virgin Suicides"--the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl. 

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond clasmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all. 
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite. 

Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

At Freda's Voice, you'll find the Friday56, where the excerpt comes from page 56 or 56% in your Kindle.

Here's a snippet from page 56 of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I know this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I found it to be an insightful and well-written book. It was completely different to what I usually read, and I thoroughly enjoyed. My review should be up soon.

What are you reading this weekend? I'd love to visit your blog and check it out.