Ellen Allen Writes
Avid reader. Wild swimmer. Indie Author of The Sham. Collector of writing titbits (http://www.ellenallen.co) and all things bookish...
Middlesex; riveting book about gender but still way too long
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (who wrote The Virgin Suicides) is a really interesting book about gender; what it really means to be male or female, whether our choices are hard-wired and how we assume our gender over time. It’s also a book about the genetic outcomes from the choices that people make when they have families. That sounds weighty but it isn’t really. It’s very well written and quite timely (written in 2002) considering the increased profile of transgender individuals and how lots of women are now talking about how they don’t define themselves as one gender or another (here or here). I just thought it was a bit too long.
