Jeffrey Eugenides

""I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver's license...records my first name simply as Cal." So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides...

This collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national crises. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people's wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art collapse under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in "Bronze," a sexually confused college freshman whose encounter with a stranger on a train leads to a revelation about his past and his future.

When school hunk Trip Fontaine convinces the beautiful but sheltered Lisbon sisters to go to the prom, the romantic fantasies of a group of neighborhood boys threaten to come true--until all are engulfed in a stunning chain of events that will change their lives forever.

"Kassie, a smart, fun-loving single woman..., despite her neurotic best friend Wally's ... objections, decides it's time to have a baby--even if it means doing it herself-- with a little help from a charming sperm donor... But, unbeknownst to her, Kassie's plans go awry because of a last-minute switch that isn't discovered until seven years later-- when Wally gets acquainted with Kassie's cute--though slightly neurotic--son"--Container.