Middlesex

It's hard to summarize this book succinctly, and I understand the feeling that it brings together a host of narratives and feelings, many of which not obviously thematically linked. Nevertheless, to me the very improbability of their occurrence is somehow more compelling; this is a fictional account of real experiences that captures something particular about each of them. For me, I took away so much. The literal American saga of the expulsion from war, immigrant experience and struggle, the Great Depression, the second war, the postwar boom, the 60s, the 70s. Race riots, white flight, San Francisco, the morphing and multiple views on religion, sex and life. The sensation of feeling out of place, at the bottom of the heap. The reassurance of the present-day narration. The repetitive cycles of life, the motifs that return, the lessons learned, the people along the way. The tropes, even. The secrets, the shame, the confusion, the inability to communicate, the struggle of making it work. Unchanging natures. The old men nattering. The teenagers. The fundamental existence of people, somehow, the contrast to the hubris of the present, to mine perhaps. Icarus rather than Prometheus.

Apparently, a review full of sentence fragments at 5am. It's good, read it.