13.) Calliope

Book Title: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Pages: 478-529 since last week; 786 since semester

After Cal ran away, he picked up his life and visited his parents once when he was a man, but never much again. Years later Milton died in a car accident and Cal finally came back home. It was the first time he's seen his parents and brother in years and also his grandmother, Desdemona.

When meeting with Desdemona, Cal found out that she was extremely senile and could barely walk and often forgot things, but a few minutes after they met Desdemona realized that Cal was Calliope, her former granddaughter. Desdemona explained everything how she married her brother Lefty and Cal finally realized how he came to be this way. I thought this was a really neat ending because it just takes the story full-circle. The novel starts out as Desdemona and Lefty's emigration from Smyrna, and it ends with Cal's coming-of-age story, meeting back with Desdemona. At one point in the story, Cal talks about how language tends to oversimplify emotion, like "joy", "regret", or "sadness". Instead, he thinks language has no words to explain complex hybrid emotions, and I think this just shows Cal's character because he is exactly that. Everyone has their own story and everyone is complicated in their own way. This book was Cal's.