One Book: Middlesex

Andy at Csikszereda Musings tagged me for this one with the introduction that 'Like a bus, you can wait years to be tagged and then loads come all at once.'

This post has ended up equally like a bus in that when you're waiting for the damn thing, it takes its own sweet time to turn up.

Anyway, a week ago I was supposed to do the following:

1. Once nominated, name one book you'd recommend wholeheartedly and explain your choice within one paragraph.


2. Nominate three people that you'll introduce to your readers in one paragraph.


3. Let these people know that they've been tagged.


4. Refer back to the person who tagged you, so that readers can travel back as well.

Let's go with Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, then. It's the story of an intersex teenager growing up in 1970s Detroit; two incestuous Greek lovers' escape from Smyrna to America in 1922; and the intersection of big-brush American history and Greek diaspora life in between. Eugenides ties the whole plot up with allusions and foreshadowings as tight as brown paper packages tied up with strings, which appropriately enough makes it one of my favourite things.

Tag, you're it: Katja, who fillets Balkan news and battles storms in the Yakima Gulag; Andrea, an author from Zagreb living in London; and Chig, a pop blogger (etc.) from Birmingham.