"There may still be things in there that will sting." Style Several reviewers considered Middlesex to be overly verbose. The Economist described the novel as "ponderous" and said that the main story (that of Cal) does not "get off the ground until halfway through" the book. Times Richard Lacayo concurred; he considered the hundreds of pages about Cal's grandparents and several historical events to be trite, making Middlesexs focus "footloose" in some spots. Several passages in the novel exhibit Eugenides' obsession with "verbose voluptuousness". An example noted by Thea Hillman in her review is an incident in which Cal says, "I sat in my seat, in a state of voluptuous agitation, of agitated voluptuousness, until my stop. Then I staggered out." A contrary opinion is given by Daniel Soar in his article for the London Review of Books. According to Soar, Eugenides did "both background and foreground in all the necessary detail", seamlessly shifting from past to present. Despite the implausible tone of the novel's events, the author successfully makes them "elaborately justified and motivated". The quality of Middlesexs writing was uneven in the opinions of Hillman and another reviewer, Sebastian Smee. The latter pointed out that Eugenides occasionally moves from the heartfelt ("I remember the first time we took off our clothes in front of each other. It was like unwinding bandages") to the "trashily journalistic" ("You've heard of installation artists? Well, the Object [a heavy smoker] was an exhalation artist") on several occasions. Humor and irony are frequently used in the book. Mark Lawson of The Guardian considered the narrator's tone to be "sardonic[ally] empath[etic]", and other critics have characterized the beginning of the novel as comical. When Cal is baptized as an infant by Father Mike, a Greek Orthodox clergyman, the priest receives a surprise: "From between my cherubic legs a stream of crystalline liquid shot into the air ... Propelled by a full bladder, it cleared the lip of the font ... [and] struck Father Mike right in the middle of the face." Derek Weiler of the Toronto Star noted that Eugenides has witty commentary about German compound words and the "horrific qualities of public men's rooms". The author employed another writing device—abrupt incongruity—in describing Desdemona's physical appearances to suggest that her incestuous acts should be taken lightly when judging her. In describing her hair, he wrote that her "braids were not delicate like a little