This book was released in the early 2000’s when I was still working for Borders Group the bookstore chain. Everyone in the publishing and book selling world was head over heels for it, including my then boss Annie who encouraged me to read it. For some reason, I didn’t. Even though it was set in my mother’s birthplace, Detroit, Michigan. Even though the story of an intersex youth raised my curiosity. The book sat on my bookshelf for years. Moved across the country with me twice, and then was sold in an estate sale in 2016. Last year, my husband was looking for some good reads. I remembered all the positive chatter about Middlesex, so I rebought a first edition copy — just like the one I’d had on my shelf for years and never read — so he could read it. He didn’t. I decided, finally, last week to give it a go. And guess what? I have placed it on my short list of best books I have ever read. Eugenides is such an amazing, beautiful, eloquent, humorous, intelligent, soulful storyteller. Not since A Gentleman in Moscow (another best book I have ever read) have I hung on every word of a book. It’s epic in scope - beginning at the turn of the 20th century in Greece - taking us to America through the eyes of immigrants in 1923 just as my immigrant grandfather came in 1923 through New York and onto Detroit. We follow the Stephenides family and all their eccentricities, ethnicity, and hardships through the 1970’s. Told by Cal - our narrator - this story sweeps you up and takes you in. A must read book. Maybe I wasn’t meant to read it until just now. Maybe it took me this long to be ready for it.