Jeffrey Eugenides

I had a miscarriage in January 2004. It was my first pregnancy and the grief of that loss was overwhelming. I went back home to my parents' house in Derry to recover. I didn't want to talk to anyone, didn't want the sympathy, however well meaning. I remember hiding in a book of all things. My brother had bought me for Christmas a hardback copy of Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitzer prize winning novel "Middlesex". It was a mighty tome of a book and the strangest, saddest story of a young child Cal born as both male and female. I lived for that book. Every day I would devour it, forgetting my own sorrow in the telling of this amazing boy/girl child. The heartbreak of it spoke to my own heartbreak. His/her pain was as raw as mine. I was cocooned by it.

Seven years on, I am now reading Jeffrey Eugenides latest book "The Marriage Plot". It's his first book since "Middlesex". Seven years on from reading "Middlesex", I have two children and live a good life in Belfast. I want to tell him how much his book helped me, but I don't think I will.