Suggestions: April 2006 Book of the Month

New York Times
'Expansive and radiantly generous ... a colossal act of curiosity, of imagination and of love'

Sunday Times Books of the Year
'This year's most sumptuously enjoyable book ... superb'

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Unnatural passions?

‘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.’

Warm, funny and hugely entertaining, this is a stunning second novel from the author of The Virgin Suicides.

The year is 1974. Studying at a Grosse Pointe girls’ school, teenager Calliope Stephanides begins to find herself attracted to a fellow student – a strawberry blonde who becomes the obscure object of her desire. To understand the feelings she never knew she possessed she must go back 80 years to her emigrating grandparents’ arrival in America. Far from being the straightforward newlyweds they seemed, they were in fact a brother and sister whose incestuous union has resulted in Calliope being born part boy, part girl . . .

Jeffrey Eugenides’ tale of forbidden passions, awkward adolescence and innocent love cements his reputation as a formidable literary talent.

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