Cal takes the license of unrealistically omniscient third-person narration, but also incorporates his first-person perspective, punctuating the story with foreshadowing and updates from the present. This part of the novel is elaborately, lovingly imagined, but it always seems just that-imagined. The ostensible point of this preamble is to trace the gene, passed on through inbreeding over generations, that causes Cal’s unusual condition. The first part tells the story of Cal’s Greek family-his grandparents’ immigration to Detroit, and his parents’ assimilation and upward mobility to Grosse Pointe. The book’s two parts are not explicitly partitioned, but rather, like Cal’s genders, each leaks into and affects the other. Some reviewers have noted that the book’s amalgam of genres reflects the split nature of the narrator’s body, and Eugenides confirmed this intention in an interview in BOMB Magazine, saying, "The book, like its hermaphroditic narrator, was meant to be a hybrid." Such facile symmetry, however, often feels like an excuse for the novel’s lack of cohesion. But many have seemed blinded to-or reluctant to acknowledge-the book’s major failures, perhaps due to their leftover reverence for The Virgin Suicides, or out of deference to the love and effort the author clearly invested in the project. Reviewers have rightly praised the generosity and big-heartedness of the novel. The critical reception to the book has been largely warm.
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