'Middlesex'

This is just a brilliant piece of fiction from the greatness of Jeffrey Eugenides. There's no real shock there.

The book is about Calliope, the offspring of Greek immigrants, who struggles with her own identity only finding out that she's a hermaphrodite. Amid this crisis is the family's backstory mixing in race, history, religion, tragedy, love, the American dream and the aspect of fitting in despite all this mess.

Near the end of the book, Calliope divorces herself from her female upbringing and becomes a boy, physically a better match. At this team, not only is Calliope (Cal) and her family struggling with this transition, but I find myself struggling with it. Frankly, you spend 400 pages getting to know this person (despite you having a pretty good idea of what happens) and then it changes. It was the same feeling I think I would have if a buddy of mine suddenly became a female -- a certain foreignness and anxiety. It's an odd feeling considering it was a fictional character.