Sprawling intergenerational novel that comes very much in two parts. The first is an incestuous marriage and emigration to America by the grandparents of the piece, told mostly in the third person, and the second is the coming-of-age of their intersex grandchild, told almost entirely in the first. That's a very poor description that makes the novel sound bitty and disconnected, yet somehow it all works. The voice is remarkably consistent throughout, and yet I don't mind the consistency, for all I prefer Cal's journey to that of his grandparents. It would I think have been easy - certainly tempting - to really try to differentiate the generations in tone as well as time, but Eugenides resists, opting instead for smoothness, and what results is undeniably accomplished. I'm generally hard on lengthy novels, as more often than not they seem flabbily indulgent, but this is one of the minority that reads shorter than it is. Granted, it took a couple of hundred pages to really hook me, but it did get there in the end, and even that long read before hooking was a pleasure, thanks entirely to the prose and voice, which was warm and mildly whimsical.