Now that I have your attention, YES this book really is about a hermaphrodite and it is actually a good book. It was not just a catchy title to get you to read this post. (Although, that would have been quite clever of me.)
It is called Middlesex and it's written by the same guy that wrote The Virgin Suicides which they made into a movie with Kirsten Dunst about ten years ago. But enough about movie stars, you want to hear about the hermaphrodite, don't you?!
In case you need a refresher, a hermaphrodite is an organism that possesses both male and female sex organs during its life. See, I told you this was going to be a good book review.
Anyway, the story is about a kid who is raised as a girl and one day when she (he?) is 14 it's like "Uh-oh, he's a boy with a mutated chromosome called 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency that makes him look like a girl but really, on the inside, he's a boy. Oops, we should have figured that out when he was born."
Don't think about that too much. Just take it at face value and move on.
The book is really interesting - it's told from the perspective of how the recessive mutated gene appeared in his family and how it was passed down over generations but never made an appearance until he was born...and at the same time you get an interesting history of this family that is totally screwed up and immigrates to the US from Greece and tries to make it in 1950's Detroit.
It's a great read full of unique characters and in the middle of all of it - a hermaphrodite to give it that certain summer beachy reading flair.
A final note though: there is nothing like reading a book in public that is about a hermaphrodite to make you feel really naughty.
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