Myth understood.

Middlesex * By Jeffrey Eugenides * Farrar, Straus, and Giroux * $27

Jeffrey Eugenides's first novel, The Virgin Suicides, established him as a good writer with a special gift for connecting with the reader, but his second, Middlesex, puts him in a different category altogether. It's a big, sweeping, ambitious book about a hermaphrodite, and it succeeds beautifully. Picture Searlett O'Hara with an elongated clitoris and you'll get an idea of the riveting story of our heroine, Callie Stephanides, who becomes our hero, Cal Stephanides, on page 441.

Yes, the book is very long, but that's good. It gives Eugenides plenty of time to deal with all sorts of disparate themes and subjects that have gone into making Cal/Callie who he/she is: Modern Greek history, silkworm farming, Detroit's social class system, and the origin of the Nation of Islam.

Cal/Callie narrates the tale, starting with growing up as the smart, clever daughter of a Greek family living in Grosse Pointe, Mich.--quite a step up for her immigrant parents. Her unusual sexual organs have not been noticed by the family's ancient and incompetent physician, and her suburban childhood proceeds relatively normally until puberty kicks in and Callie develops lustful feelings for her best girlfriend, a Waspy stunner. Their torrid summer romance allows Eugenides to revisit the world of adolescent angst he explored so well in The Virgin Suicides.

But Middlesex's true genius lies in the way it allows each reader to confront his or her own "inner hermaphrodite." In exploring what is supposedly a freakish condition, Eugenides sees a universal one. It turns out the same things are ultimately important--love, family, self-fulfillment, and a conscientiously applied program of hair removal when necessary.