Gardening Leave

There are already many good reasons to love Tuscany: the delightfully sensual landscape, the magnificent architecture, the glorious food and the ravishing women (or is it ravishing food and glorious women?), but we can now happily add another one to the long list: Mark Mills’ second novel, “The Savage Garden”, which is a haunting tale of murder, love, divided loyalties and innocence lost set in post-war Italy. It’s a beautifully evocative story of a “long hot summer”, as far removed from “Chiantishire” as you could imagine, though Mills does describe the cities of Florence and Siena with much affection, while perfectly capturing the mysterious atmosphere of the eponymous garden.

Mark Mills is a British author, who has lived in both Italy and France. Like the hero in “The Savage Garden”, he also graduated from Cambridge University. To date, he has only published three novels, though his first book “Amagansett” won the 2004 award for Best Crime Novel by a Debut Author from the prestigious Crime Writers Association. Subsequently re-titled the somewhat less cryptic “The Whaleboat House”, Mills’ debut immediately exhibited his brand of elegant, stylish writing, but also established his trademark themes of time and place, namely setting his stories in the period after World War II in exotic locations (in this case, Long Island). In the same vein, his third novel “The Information Officer” is located in Malta, though this time the story actually takes place during the Second World War.

"This Charming Man"

In “The Savage Garden”, an indolent student, Adam Strickland, follows up a suggestion by his tutor, the learned Professor Crispin Leonard, to travel to the Villa Docci in Tuscany to study the architecture for his thesis. Although the professor offers muted praise for the house itself, “An impressive, if somewhat pedestrian, example of High Renaissance Tuscan vernacular”, he is more effusive about the stunning garden, where “art and nature come together to create a whole new entity”. During his studies, Adam finds himself drawn towards two possible murders and the (family) ties that bind them together, even though they are separated by four hundred years. The first secret is uncovered via a series of clues in the 16th century garden, while the second mystery is altogether closer to home, just after the Nazi occupation of Italy came to a violent end. Solving the first puzzle turns Adam into something of an academic hero, but speculating on the latter places his life in danger.

Built by a banker as a memorial to his wife, who died in 1548 at the tender age of 25, the striking, but disquieting, garden becomes truly enchanted for Adam. A dazzling vision of wooded glades, grottoes, temples, reflecting pools and classical statues of “petrified gods, goddesses and nymphs playing out their troubled stories on this leafy stage”, it seems to give the habitual slacker a sense of purpose for the first time in his young life. The fascinating garden is used as a plot vehicle to introduce us to Italian history and culture, as well as the Doccis’ family background, but is described in loving detail, “Having laid out this new kingdom, Federico had then dedicated it to Flora, goddess of flowers, and populated it with the characters from ancient mythology over whom she held sway: Hyacinth, Narcissus and Adonis. All had died tragically, and all lived on in the flowers that burst from the earth where their blood had spilled - the same flowers that still enameled the ground in their respective areas of the garden every springtime”. Little wonder that Adam takes time to smell the flowers, so to speak.

"Until I learn to accept my reward"

Everyone believes that the grieving husband had designed the garden as a spectacular homage to his dead wife, emphasised by carving her name into the triumphal arch over the splendid amphitheatre, but Adam senses that something is not quite right about the place. He is struck by certain discordant elements in the garden’s symmetry with the placement of the statues and their expressions oddly dissonant and even unsettling, especially a rather provocative marble statue of the banker’s wife. He begins to suspect that the garden’s iconography contains a far more sinister message, representing the late Signor Docci’s confession that he murdered his wife, but also explaining the motive for his crime. The cuckolded husband had actually poisoned his spouse to avenge her adulterous ways. A savage garden indeed.

Ignoring any statu(t)e of limitations, Adam makes use of classical Italian literature to piece together the clues. He first consults Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, a volume given to him by his professor, in an attempt to discern the meaning of the different statues and whom they might represent, but he eventually realises that this is a false trail. However, his literary approach is still valid and a careful reading of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” enables him to decipher the husband’s intentions, as the nine-tiered garden is clearly modeled on the nine circles of hell.

The story parallels a more recent killing, when Emilio, the eldest son of Signora Francesca Docci, the imperious, but frail matriarch of the Villa, was shot by German soldiers as they retreated. However, Adam discovers that there are several versions of this death and he cannot understand why Francesca has sealed off the floor where Emilio was murdered, as this obliges the family to live forever with this painful memory. Just as he did in “The Whaleboat House”, Mills uses a suspicious death as a way to examine the scars from war that have never quite healed in a tight-knit community. The German occupation devastated the village with understandable tensions still present between the families of collaborators and partisans. The Docci family had come to an understanding with the culture-loving Nazi officer, so that the Villa’s works of art and historical gardens were maintained, but this arrangement was unexpectedly terminated in a disastrous, drunken night of violence, leaving dark secrets hidden within the family domain.

Having said that this is a book about two mysteries, it’s not really a traditional whodunit, but more of an intriguing puzzle – a genuine literary thriller. You will have to look elsewhere for blood, gore, forensics and a high body count, though Mills skillfully creates a growing air of menace with the relative lack of action only increasing the suspense. No, this is a novel of detection, reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, at one stage Adam shares a private joke with his brother Harry that references Arthur Conan Doyle’s finest creation. However, don’t expect a neat dénouement in the style of Agatha Christie, where the culprit is dramatically unveiled before the assembled guests. Mills is much more restrained and understated than that.

"Hold your head high"

At its heart, the book is really about Adam’s development, his coming of age, where he starts to use his brain, rather than always taking the easy option. Like his namesake in the Garden of Eden (don’t tell me that’s a coincidence), Adam rises to the challenge – in both senses. We first encounter him as a rather lazy student, before accompanying him in the guise of innocent abroad, though there is a mounting sense of a loss of innocence in our hero, like Michael Frayn’s nostalgic “Spies”. Initially a reluctant detective (“This means nothing to me/Oh, Siena”), he slowly becomes an obsessive investigator, as he is profoundly affected by his environment. In Cambridge Adam was unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend, but in the warmth of Italy he transforms into Mr. Loverman, bedding not one, but two Latin lovelies. In the end, the youthful scholar comes away with much more than a thesis, “barely recognising himself”.

There are romantic diversions aplenty in this novel with love (and lust) playing a large role throughout. Adam finds the Docci family, their house and unique garden equally seductive, but he is also captivated by the more earthy pleasures offered by the gorgeous widow Signora Fanelli, the sexually frustrated owner of the local pensione, who is described as a “stringier version of Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze”. Good enough for Adam – and for most red-blooded males, I would have thought.

"Storm in a teacup"

In the course of his investigations, Adam also has a fling with Antonella, the scarred, but alluring, granddaughter of Signora Docci. He is even more entranced by her feminine charms than the mystifying garden, though her valuable insight helps him to penetrate its hidden meaning. Ultimately he is only fixated on solving the puzzle at the cost of their relationship, which almost brings to life the description of the garden’s temple, “The building was dedicated to Echo, the unfortunate nymph who fell hard for Narcissus. He, too preoccupied with his own beauty, spurned her attentions, whereupon Echo, heartbroken, faded away until only her voice remained.”

Moving stuff, but the beautiful Antonella may not be everything she appears to be. Has she in fact been deceiving Adam? He begins to suspect that his summer project is an elaborate set-up, where he is not proceeding of his own volition, but is being used as a pawn in Signora Docci’s Machiavellian schemes to uncover the truth behind the Villa’s two suspicious deaths. Professor Leonard had warned Adam not to under-estimate his hostess, even though she might be old and frail. The Docci’s have some murky skeletons hidden away in their “History of Violence”.

In fact, everyone appears to have something to hide in this novel about the art of duplicity – about young love, betrayal and sibling rivalry. Adam’s older, roguish brother Harry turns up out of the blue, ostensibly to provide some light relief in his role as a scrounging raconteur, but he also highlights Adam’s lack of perception about their own family secrets, when he informs him that their father has been playing away with his secretary. Similar to the poignant “The Whaleboat House”, which served as a lyrical lament to the fishing community whose traditional way of life was threatened by the arrival of wealthy New Yorkers, a keen sense of loss and longing also suffuses Mills’ second novel, affecting all those we encounter.

One of the author’s great strengths is to draw a cast of credible characters with the appropriate shades of light and dark. Mills himself has said, “There is an old adage in scriptwriting circles which goes ‘character is action’. The plot can only do a certain amount. If the characters don't hold the attention of the reader, then you are fighting an uphill battle”, which is difficult to contradict. In this book, the individuals are all solid, charming, likable people, and it is all too easy to see how Adam believes them. Fausto, a surprisingly well read, but cynical, former soldier actually warns him of the dangers of getting too close to the family, “Be careful up there at the Villa Docci. It’s a bad place and people have a tendency to die there”. Then there is Maria, the unfriendly housekeeper, who acts as Signora Docci’s eyes and ears, appraising Adam “as if he were a horse she was thinking of betting on (and leaving him with the distinct impression that she wouldn’t be reaching for her purse anytime soon)”.

"Mystery man"

This is a good example of Mills’ crisp, elegant prose, but other instances abound. During a storm, “The treetops swayed like drunken lovers on a dance floor”. A work of art is not considered a masterpiece, “but it was distinctive, an unsettling blend of innocence and intensity - like the gaze of a child staring at you from the rear window of the car in front”. His very pleasing writing style is erudite and intelligent, without ever being pretentious or condescending. There are many literary pleasures to be found here: rich imagery, lush characterisations and wonderfully comprehensive research. Its beauty lies in its subtlety, as his knowledge of art, history, literature and nature is worn lightly, yet convincingly, providing far more depth than you would expect in most crime novels. Not only does he manage to artfully weave his way through a multi-layered narrative, seamlessly switching between three time periods, but his plot is deftly paced, taking its time, while still managing to be totally gripping.

Obvious comparisons would include Iain Pears for his blend of crime and history, though his novels are set in a much earlier era, and EM Forster, whose “A Room with a View” was memorably located in Florence. However, John Fowles’ “The Magus” is possibly more apposite, as it also features a seductive young girl leading a perplexed protagonist into a secret world. In terms of the psychological suspense, fans of PD James would surely not be disappointed in Mills’ work.

"Bound for glory"

“The Savage Garden” will appeal to those who love a good mystery (or two). As one of the novel’s characters says, “Things can make sense at the time, but as you get older those consolations no longer help you sleep. It's the only thing I've learned. We all think we know the answer, and we're all wrong. Shit, I'm not sure we even know what the question is”. By the end of the story, it’s not only Adam who has fallen under the spell of the garden. And, by the way, you don’t need to like gardening to enjoy this book.

Blinded By The Light

We do so love our crime series featuring an intriguing detective, especially if the stories are played out in exotic foreign locations. Witness the success of Kurt Wallander in Ystad, Aurelio Zen in Venice and, stretching the point slightly, Rebus in Edinburgh. To this august list, we should surely add the name of Javier Falcón from Seville, the hot, historical capital of southern Spain, who is the central personality in Robert Wilson’s thrilling sequence of four books (tetralogy for classicists, quadrilogy for modern marketeers).

Falcón is a charismatic homicide detective, but he is also a complex and interesting character with a number of faults. Withdrawn and solitary, his brooding agonies of self-doubt embody man’s moral struggle and human frailties, as his journey of self-discovery remind you of the psychological depths to which Adam Dalgliesh is subjected by PD James. Although a Sevillano, Falcón is still an outsider in his own city, having worked extensively in Barcelona, Madrid and Zaragoza.

"Biker Grove"

Even if he is a cultured, intelligent man, well versed in the ways of the world, he is only sporadically wise. The only thing extraordinary about him appears to be his ordinariness. Again very much like Wallander and Rebus, any knowledge is hard-earned, resulting at least as much from mistakes and bruises, both of the physical and mental variety, as from brilliant insights. In these stories, detective work is described as an attritional process, with Falcón slowly but surely guiding us through the maze. In fact, he is caught in an intricate web on a number of levels: criminal, personal and historical.

Robert Wilson is a British crime writer currently resident in Portugal, the author of many stylish thrillers that have been enhanced by placing them in glamorous foreign countries. His first four books were magical, enthralling pieces of detective noir (geddit) set in West Africa, while Portugal provided the backdrop for both “A Small Death in Lisbon”, the winner of the prestigious Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel in 1999, and “The Company of Strangers”. More recently, he has been playing “Spanish songs in Andalucia” while composing perhaps his best-known work, the Javier Falcón quartet.

"Shadow boxing"

The first book in the series is “The Blind Man of Seville”, which is a wonderfully literary detective novel, albeit with dark and disturbing overtones, despite its sunny, colourful setting, that focuses on Falcón’s hunt for a vicious murderer. The first gruesome killing symbolically takes place in Holy Week, when Raul Jimenez, a leading restaurateur with a shady past, is found bound and gagged in front of his television with his eyelids cut off. Not only has he been brutally tortured, but his body is also covered with self-inflicted wounds, which testify to his struggles to avoid the images that he has been forced to watch. When confronted by this horrific scene, the normally implacable Javier Falcón feels inexplicably afraid, asking himself what the victim had seen that could have been so terrible. The investigation into the murders lead Falcón to the journals of his late father, an acclaimed artist, causing him to unearth shocking revelations about the past, both Francisco Falcón’s and his own, thus bringing him to an emotional crisis.

When we first meet Javier Falcón, he is under intense pressure and is in a poor mental state, almost psychologically impaired. He lives alone in the splendid home of his deceased father, but the comfortable surroundings offer him little solace. Unable to get along with his more sociable Spanish colleagues, he is nevertheless obsessed with work, even though his career has stalled. All regard him as a cold, repressed individual, not surprising as he has no friends or lovers, his wife having walked out dismissing him with the contemptuous, “You have no heart”. He wears close-fitting suits, ties and lace-up shoes, as do most fashionable Spaniards, but in his case they also keep him restrained like a straitjacket made by the finest tailors. However, for all his problems, we appreciate the quality of his intelligence and even empathise with his troubles, sensing that at his core he is a genuinely decent man.

"Mine's a Rioja"

Like “A Small Death in Lisbon”, this book showcases Wilson’s technical skills at running a narrative across different time periods, as it alternates between the present day perspective of the police inquiry and the historical revelations from Francisco’s diary entries. In fact, the book addresses three investigations: the first a straightforward police procedural into the murders; the second a penetrating character study into Javier’s mind; and the third a literary study of the journals. The killings are obviously quite sickening, but Wilson’s multi-layered approach, where he forensically dissects the lives of his characters, peeling away their self-deception, discovers even uglier insights into their motives. His claustrophobic focus zooms in on shameful family secrets that reveal themselves to be more ghastly than the most sadistic torture scene – and there are plenty of those to occupy Falcón’s squad.

Falcón informs the widow that the murder is “more extraordinary than any I have seen in my career”, and it is certainly one of the most brutal openings to any crime novel. It is true that Wilson pulls no punches in presenting uncomfortable images of unflinching violence, though there is a poetic edge to his prose that makes even the most merciless scene absolutely compelling. In fact, the author would argue that nothing overly graphic is actually on the page, and he is only guilty of encouraging the reader’s vivid imagination, especially as he often depicts violence through the eyes of a victim, which is a very uncomfortable place to be. His mastery of pacing is evident and he is at his best when ratcheting up and sustaining tension, so the book succeeds admirably as a classic suspense story.

"Art for art's sake"

However, where it really scores is as a brilliantly conceived psychological thriller, the psychology in question being that of the lead detective. The combination of physical and (undisclosed) mental torture fills the reader’s mind with questions, so we are left as confused and intrigued as Falcón himself. Wilson is not an author who is afraid to demand a lot from his audience and any revelations only follow numerous cunning twists in the plot. The orchestrators of evil deeds are not blindingly (see what I did there?) obvious, but are in many ways more frightening than the standard literary psychopaths, because they are so plausibly immersed in everyday life. However, all the villains are driven by reason, not of the intellectual variety, but more by damage that they have sustained at the hands of others, which has broken the bonds of trust. In terms of motivating hatred and aggressive revenge, potent reasons here include love withheld, innocence defiled and vulnerability abused.

The book is as much a study of the lead investigator’s character as it is the story of a horrific crime with the adventure to find the killer taking Falcón on a painful journey of his own. Increasingly, it becomes clear to him that the murders are linked to his own past and unexplained deaths in his family, forcing him to confront ghosts that he has long kept buried. Although he tries desperately to hold everything together, his precious composure begins to unravel and his mental health declines to the point that he becomes a detective “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”. As his personal demons are exposed, including the untimely death of his mother, Falcón must dig down to his very foundations to see what he’s made of – and that makes him a truly mesmerising character. He realises that this is not just a hunt for a seemingly omniscient murderer, but also a search for his missing heart.

An old photograph at the murder scene prompts Javier to read a set of journals left by his famous father, the artist Francisco Falcón. These diaries are a real gem: terrifically frank, full of drama and confession, they are similar to Alan Clark’s, but with more paintbrushes, guns and carnal acts (if you can believe that). Francisco had always been an important person in Javier’s life, but he discovers that he never really knew the father he had so dearly loved. Born in Tangiers, Wilson describes him as a “half-mad, demonic, charismatic, crafty, weak, vulnerable, brutal, sensual, chilling, amusing maniac”.

The discovery of how Francisco’s wicked acts, including atrocious crimes in the Spanish Civil War and unlimited hedonism involving catamites in North Africa, helped shape the motivations for the current spate of killing holds at least as much fascination as the identity of the murderer, especially as they provide important clues. Although long dead, Francisco Falcón is a magnetic figure, dominating the story through the sheer energy of his journals, which he calls a “small history of pain” – that will soon become Javier’s, as he has to re-assess who he really is. All his old certainties are undermined: does he really know his parents? If everything that he had previously believed to be true turns out to be false, where does that leave him?

"Are you sitting comfortably?"

Wilson has said that the book is “about our ability to distinguish between appearance and reality, the extent to which we can believe what our own eyes tell us”. Although the theme of the deceptiveness of appearances is far from original, it is explored here in unusual depth and in many guises. Seville itself encapsulates this contrast with Wilson describing it as “an apparently beautiful place full of happy, animated people whose reality is no different to the urban woes of any other city”. The taut and terrifying Falcón thrillers turn this sunny Spanish city upside down to reveal its seamy underside: petty crime, drugs, racial tensions, corruption and, yes, people get killed. As a vivid example, a prostitute comes to fear “when the shadows move”, the moments when darkness acquires a life of its own. The novel also has a strong art theme running through it with characters not just creating art, but also worshipping it, buying it, stealing it and even inspiring it, and, of course, art offers a multiplicity of dimensions – as Francisco shows us.

The city of Seville is almost a star in its own right, Wilson really bringing it to life. During the day it shimmers with heat and vitality, while the nightlife has a tangible feel with its crowded, smoky bars and mysterious, dark side streets. Wilson has a rare ability to draw the reader in completely to the point where you can almost taste the atmosphere of the world that the protagonists inhabit. As well as being highly evocative, the city’s characteristics are reflected in Javier’s experiences: “The narrow, winding, cobbled streets of Seville became indistinguishable from his anguished mental alleyways. They all formed part of the texture of Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón’s collapsing inner world”. Similarly, the bullfight mirrored the intricacies of the interplay between investigator and killer. However, Falcón’s straitlaced, humourless demeanour is in marked contrast to the riot of colour of Seville’s fiesta.

"Where the streets have no name"

The Spanish backdrop is crucial to the Falcón series with Wilson also wanting to “show where modern Spain had come from”. In particular, he has posed the question, “Did this vibrant, artistic, animated, sociable people have something to hide?” If you want a flavour of Spanish history, then you have come to the right place, as the series covers inter alia the Spanish Civil War, involvement in World War II, nationalism in Tangiers, modern art, the 2004 Madrid bombings, Islamic terrorism, the Russian mafia, the Spanish Intelligence Agency and corruption in the construction trade and local government.

Wilson’s ability to dig beneath the skin to explore psychological and emotional nuances is not restricted to Javier Falcón, as he introduces a host of fascinating characters, who feature throughout the series. An interesting relationship develops between Javier and Consuelo Jimenez, the blue-eyed enigma, who first appears as the primary suspect in the murder. Even more important is Javier’s history with the judge Esteban Calderón, who has hooked up with his ex-wife Ines. In “The Blind Man”, Falcón greatly respects Calderón, who expertly manages the investigation, while Falcón’s mental state deteriorates. Initially Calderón appears to be a charismatic man of integrity and courage, who reveres art and is extremely intelligent. However, he is later revealed to be very different: a womaniser, a wife beater and a coward, who would do anything to preserve his exalted status. Yet again, we are faced with the theme of appearance versus reality.

"Side effect"

As you might infer from the title, this is a book all about seeing, but the irony is that Falcón and many others do not see things at all clearly. Most of the characters are blind in some way, whether to a painful past or their own potential for happiness. This is particularly true for Falcón. His eyes are fine; it’s his soul that cannot see the truth of his haunted history, which prevents him from seeing what’s in front of him. Blindness is a recurring topic with allusions to Francisco being worried about going blind and Javier’s therapist, the perceptive Alicia Aguardo, actually being blind.

There are four books in the Javier Falcón saga. Each one has its own stand-alone investigation, and is distinct rather than formulaic, but the series is held together by an enduring theme with inter-locking story lines and characters. Some of the questions raised in the first book do not get fully answered until the last, so the way to get most out of them is (understandably) to start at the beginning and work your way through the books in order. Wilson has said that he wanted to see how a man could change, taking Falcón on a specific journey from one point in his life to another. Normally middle-aged men never change, which is the reason why Falcón goes through such a mental upheaval in “The Blind Man of Seville”, as this sets the scene for his future development with the subsequent books being all about his rebuilding.

In “The Silent and the Damned” (published as “The Vanished Hands” in the US), Falcón learns the art of communication and we see him start to employ it in his police work. In “The Hidden Assassins” he is back at the top of his game in terms of running his squad and managing a huge and complex investigation, greatly respected by the Seville community, but there’s still something (or rather someone) missing. The lady who puts a spring in his (Spanish) step in “The Ignorance of Blood” is the sexy Consuelo, thus completing the transformation of Javier Falcón.

If you will pardon the pun, “The Blind Man of Seville” is an eye-opening read. Not only is it crime writing at its very best, but it’s also a lot more. Part tense thriller, part compelling examination of the effects of the past on the present (and part Andalucian travelogue), this book is a marvel of construction: commencing with a truly shocking murder, the pace of the investigation is at first steady, then quickens as the journals are introduced, before a breathless last lap as the revelations come thick and fast. If you disagree with me, you’re welcome to your opinion, but remember that there’s none so blind as those who will not see.

Boys Don't Cry

If an author takes ten years to write a follow-up to his debut novel, even one as stunning as “The Virgin Suicides”, then the most devoted of fans might be concerned that he had lost his way. However, rest assured that Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Middlesex” was well worth the wait, in the same way that Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” and Donna Tartt’s “The Little Friend” rewarded their readers’ patience. Published in 2002, “Middlesex” is a fabulously exuberant book that deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Rich in character, history and humour, this larger-than-life tale of the Stephanides family will haunt you long after the dénouement.

The story grabs you right off the bat with an intriguing opening line:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

Yes, that’s right, the book’s protagonist and narrator, Calliope Stephanides is not like other girls: she’s a hermaphrodite. Raised as a girl, Callie discovers that she’s actually a boy during her teenage years – at least from the perspective of her chromosomes. What’s in her jeans is affected by her genes - the "Jean Genie" of her times. Unlike Gore Vidal’s abrasive gender bender in “Myra Breckinridge and Myron”, Callie is a sweet girl who just happens to grow up to become Cal, a 41-year-old bearded man. Although the condition is, to say the least, confusing for our hero/heroine, it’s nothing new under the sun:

There have been hermaphrodites around forever, Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That's why everybody's always searching for their other half. Except for us. We've got both halves already.

"Men who stare at goatees"

Although the book’s title is a reference to the Stephanides’ family address in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe, it is more to do with what it means to occupy the middle ground, not just the complex state of mind (and body) between male and female, but also Greek and American, and even past and present. Callie’s attempts to find the balance between her female and male halves is matched by her family’s efforts to reconcile their Greek heritage with their adopted American culture. In this sense, “Middlesex” is two books in one: a coming of age novel and a (Big Fat Greek) family saga. In fact, it’s also something of a detective novel, as Cal explores his past to explain how he came to be this way (no, that way), so much so that Cal’s over-active imagination allows him to be a witness to his own conception, just like Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy”.

However, there’s nothing fair to middling about this book. No, it’s an ambitious novel that spans three generations and two continents, managing to blend the many different family affairs into a captivating whole. It may be an epic, but it’s also a set of intensely personal memoirs, as Callie delves deeply into the sprawling history of her relatives to understand who she is.

"On your bike"

The investigation takes us all the way back to the war between Greece and Turkey in 1922, when we first meet Callie’s (incestuous) paternal grandparents. Lefty Stephanides and his sister Desdemona were orphaned during the conflict and only escaped the Great Fire of Smyrna by emigrating to America. Their village had been so ravaged by the hostilities that only two women remained as marriage candidates for Lefty, neither of which appealed to him, so he decided to follow his heart and marry his sister Desdemona after an amusing courtship on the sea journey, when the siblings pretended to be strangers who had just met.

They eventually reach the United States and move to Detroit, where they stay at the home of their cousin Lina and her husband Jimmy. By an incredible coincidence, the two women become pregnant on the same night, Desdemona giving birth to a son, Milton, while Lina has a little girl, Tessie. In another twist in the Stephanides’ family fortunes, Milton marries Tessie, his second cousin – a union that would prove fateful for the gene pool when they had two children of their own. First on the scene was a boy, curiously named Chapter Eleven, so Tessie was desperate for a daughter for the second child, timing her love making to produce the desired result. In 1960 they got what they wanted when Calliope was born, the half-blind family doctor failing to spot any anomaly. Equally amazing was the parents’ inability to notice anything different about their beautiful baby girl, though Callie later finds it hard to believe that Milton and Tessie were ever capable of anything:

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that these two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup?

"On me head, son"

Thus, the rogue gene began its journey with the unnatural coupling of Callie’s grandparents in a village on Mount Olympus, the mythological home of the Greek gods, and eventually flowered in her unfortunate body nearly forty years later, when the shameful secret hidden in the family’s past caught up with her. A loser in the Greek version of “The Generation Game”, you can imagine poor Callie saying, “Not nice to see you, to see you … not nice!”

In this way, Callie is born with a rare genetic anomaly called 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, an affliction that usually only affects inbred communities. Although some may shy away from a person that is not “normal”, Callie is portrayed as a highly sympathetic individual – a character that is achingly, recognizably human who manages to overcome her own Greek tragedy with humour and sang-froid, as she gains your acceptance and wins your affection. Eugenides tenderly describes her plight without being overly sentimental, so you don’t just feel sorry for her, but actively want her to overcome her challenges.

"A class act"

From certain angles, “Middlesex” could be considered as an addition to the many stories of adolescent angst, albeit one of the strangest (less coming of age, more coming into her own), as it taps into the usual anxieties and uncertainties of the teenage years, when nervous excitement at new experiences combines with a dread of humiliation. During this most awkward phase of her life, Callie’s youthful fear of being different is exacerbated when she fails to develop into womanhood at the same rate as her classmates, remaining flat chested and waiting in vain for her first period. She first begins to question her sexuality when she falls for her best friend, the magnificently named Obscure Object of Desire (shades of the mysterious teenage attractions in “The Virgin Suicides”), but it is only when she sneaks a peek at a doctor’s report that she discovers that she has the genes of a male. Worse still, although she’s genetically a boy, as she has been brought up as a girl, the medical advice is to perform a “procedure” (effectively a castration) to definitively make her female.

In fact, transformation is Eugenides’ central conceit, a belief that everything – and everyone – is on the point of turning into something else. Girls become women, boys become girls, Greeks become Americans and even silkworms become silk (as part of Desdemona’s sericulture). Although “Middlesex” owes a great deal to the ancient Greek poets, it has been influenced at least as much by the Romans (particularly Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”), as acknowledged by the author: “Latin literature, Ovid and Virgil, was the first writing I studied line by line. These were epics, sometimes epics of transformation, and when I look at my work I realise that influenced me enormously”. You can see this with the parallels drawn between Callie’s double identity and the relationship of her grandparents, who transform themselves from siblings to lovers after they leave the Greek islands.

"Aaah, we fade to grey"

One of Eugenides’ great strengths is his ability to find a voice that is “capable of telling epic events in the third person and psychosexual events in the first person. It had to render the experience of a teenage girl and an adult man, or an adult male-identified hermaphrodite”. He elegantly achieves this, managing to switch between Callie and Cal without disrupting the balance of the narrative, by giving both sides of the coin some qualities that are easily transferable between genders, such as intelligence, insight and humour.

In Greek mythology, Calliope was the muse of heroic poetry, but the protagonist’s name is not the only way that Eugenides incorporates the Greek imprint into his modern tale. Apart from generally viewing America’s growing pains through the eyes of the Greek Orthodox community, there are references to the failed presidential campaign by Michael Dukakis (the Greek-American JFK), while the aunt who prefers the company of women is coyly described within the family as “one of those women they named the island after”. You might think that it’s all Greek to Eugenides, as the Greek-American writer was also raised in Detroit and then moved to Berlin, just like his hero, but obviously it’s only autobiographical up to a point …

"Behind bars"

Detroit is almost a character in the book, as its native son captures the Motor City’s sad beauty and sense of danger with all the loving attention that James Joyce bestowed on Dublin in “Ulysses”. Callie’s struggles somehow become a metaphor for the city, as Eugenides paints an affectionate, but exasperated look at what has become of urban America and its ambitious dreams:

Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.

The chase for the mighty Dollar is epitomised by the description of Lefty’s dehumanising job on the Ford production line, which also reflects the theme of transformation running through the book:

At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joysticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of 100 kinds.

"A Detroit Piston"

The book is full of such clever insights, but it is not afraid of sentiment, so Eugenides regards the most ridiculous members of the Stephanides family with unreserved sympathy. The character development is superb with each of the many people we encounter in this multi-generational saga forging a unique personality that encourages the reader to really empathise with them. It’s a broad church, featuring entrepreneurs, charlatans, hippies, lesbians, corrupt priests, burlesque performers and even housewives, but Eugenides’ gift is taking characters on the edge of society and making us see ourselves in them. There is an abundance of warmth and humour in these eccentrics, but as with all Greek classics, tragedy often waits around the corner, though there is one twist that very few will anticipate.

The book is set against the turbulent history of 20th century America, which not only perfectly captures the confusion and emotions of the time, but also beautifully fills out the features of the locations and their communities. There is a wealth of detail here, as Eugenides observes the key changes affecting the American Dream: Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Civil Rights movement, race riots and the Vietnam War. This solid foundation of historical fact incorporates so much period detail that it helps make the core story believable, despite all the absurdities and the numerous flights of fancy, including a keen ear for the dialogue of the time, such as when Chapter Eleven explains his refusal to use deodorant during his hippie phase: “I’m a human. This is what humans smell like”.

"Meet the new Geography teacher"

As well as tragedy, Eugenides is proficient at finding a gently ironic humour in situations or even names, such as Callie’s brother Chapter Eleven, which refers to his subsequent bankruptcy. The combination of dry, dark comedy with a shimmering nostalgia is reminiscent of his first book “The Virgin Suicides”, which also managed to find some laughs in the blackest of subjects, namely five girls from the same family all committing suicide. Of course, Eugenides could have taken the easy option of making cheap jokes about sexual identity in “Middlesex”, but he avoids any temptation to deal with the subject in a voyeuristic fashion, instead handling the material (sorry) with great delicacy. He opts for a sweetly comic – and ultimately more persuasive – approach, which tries “not to make something mundane strange, but rather, something that is somewhat more freaky, more normal”.

The point is that every human being, not just Callie, is subject to the whims and caprices of fate. However unique each of us may be, in reality we are the culmination of a random journey through social history and genetics; the product of other people’s decisions, desires and destinies. The archaic Greek notion of fate has been supplanted by the fashionable theme of genetics, but the song remains the same, as Callie well understands:

But in the end it wasn't up to me. The big things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.

She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.

"Lean on me"

Other members of her family are less aware of this important truth. In their pursuit of love and success, they too often forget the lessons of their Greek forbears. Time and again, these loveable characters attempt to cheat fate with predictable, sometimes tragic, but always engaging results.

Ultimately, I think that the book’s essential message is the importance of finding your own identity and learning to become comfortable with that, as Cal does when he first escapes to San Francisco and then Berlin. In a poignant moment of self-realisation, he refuses to be something that he isn’t:

I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It's not the best way to live. But it's the way I am. It's amazing what you can get used to.

Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has. We're all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me.

Identity is something that everyone struggles with, so Cal’s struggle is not only tender and honest, but is also relevant to all of us. Eugenides has taken the greatest mystery of all (Who are we? Where do we come from?) and crafted an answer of sorts that is both illuminating and imaginative. Funnier, more compassionate and even more educational than the Hilary Swank vehicle “Boys Don’t Cry”, which tackled a similar subject, “Middlesex” is a triumphant affirmation of love, the human spirit and the right of everyone to lead the life of their own choosing, even if that means having it both ways.