I am ashamed to admit that I first came across the term “intersex” and learnt of its meaning only after I started reading Jeffrey Eugenides Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Middlesex, a few years ago. But that is one of the functions of literature, as we know, to inform and to educate, and Middlesex, even though it is written by an author who himself is not intersex, offers an piercing and insightful introduction into the mind of a protagonist who is intersex, a protagonist as interesting and poignant as Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye or Christopher Boone from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Eugenides’ protagonist is initially named Callie (short for Calliope) and raised as a girl. However, during the character’s teenage years, it becomes clear that she (he) is, in fact, intersex – which can manifest in a number of ways, but in the novel, the character is feminine in appearance while having male sexual organs and a male gender identity. One of the major stories told by Middlesex then, is how Callie embraces her identity as intersex and becomes Cal.

The novel’s treatment of its intersex character is a subtle and delicate process, albeit the character at the center of this process is rambunctious, witty and often wild, and it manages to relay knowledge of being intersex in a way that is always informative and never exploitative or presented in a way that is denigrating to Cal. In fact, Eugenides’ sensitive presentation of an intersex character makes Cal, his relationship with his family, his involvement with girls, his unruly teenage years, and all his insecurities, his flaws and his gifts, intimately human to us all in the way his experiences in life, apart from him being intersex, is so very familiar to us all.

For example, many people might not be intersex, but we have all been uncertain about sex and sexuality at some point and we have all been in love and we have all felt the need for a physical and sexual connection with someone we love and so, we all identify with Cal.
The novel is also about family and relationships and the author relies on his own Greek heritage as a base for the lengthy background information that leads up to the birth of Cal. Indeed, the story of Cal’s grandparents and their incestuous relationship, their flight from war-ravaged Smyrna, their hiding of the fact that they are actually siblings and their move to America to start anew contains so many great themes (forbidden love, war, the immigrant experience) that it might as well be a book by itself.

Indeed, this is one of the criticisms of the novel. Although not a complete distraction, the history leading up to Cal’s own story is heavy and runs for many, many pages, so that by the time Cal’s story picks up, there is the risk of being already too wound up in the story of Lefty and Desdemona, Cal’s grandparents. But there is an argument which suggests that the history of one’s family is as important as the individual, as we are each a compact summary of everything that came before us and it seems as if Desdemona recognizes this later in the book when she wonders if her old relationship with her brother was expressed in the way their grandchild was born intersex.

Eugenides’ subtle hints to Greek myths – the Minotaur, for example – have also been found to contain much commentary on his intersex character and, of course, we must also consider the way that modern critics have sought to present the Minotaur as being more than simply a terrifying monster made of the combined halves of two different creatures. Likewise, Eugenides’ book tries to assertively affirm the need to neither fear nor vilify intersex individuals or, indeed, all that is unfamiliar.

The subjects of the book may be unfamiliar and intersex characters in literature are definitely rarities, but if those reasons are not enough to convince you to read the novel, then let the other reasons convince you. Read it for the story, for its lifelike characters, for its humour, for the way it teaches us about things we know little of.