his family's history and actions prior to his birth, he speaks in an androgynous voice, with limited omniscience; he acknowledges that he is fabricating some of the details. John Mullan, University College London's professor of English and a contributor to The Guardian, wrote that by permitting Cal to be unrealistically aware of fellow characters' thoughts, Eugenides intentionally contravenes an elementary standard in storytelling fiction. In the novel's closing pages, Cal provides minute details about his father's dying moments and thoughts in a nonsensical car accident even though he is several thousand miles from the scene and only learns of the tragedy from his brother. Cal has the ability to dwell in the minds of others because as a female who has become a male, his identity is not confined by his own body. According to Mullan, this "mobility of identification becomes a narrative principle" and is thoroughly exploited in Middlesex. The novel follows the principle that people are molded by events prior to their birth, and Eugenides explores a character's prenatal life in terms of his or her genes; the narrator is, however, subject to the principle that whatever he does not know is of his imagination. As such, contradictory statements highlight the unreliable nature of Cal's narration. While narrating the story that pre-dates his birth, he remarks, "Of course, a narrator in my position (prefetal at the time) can't be entirely sure about any of this." However, he later says, "I alone, from the private box of my primordial egg, saw what was going on." Cal's dubious omniscience, doubtful narration, and parodies combine to show that his unreliability is an act of mischief. Mullan remarked that Eugenides' narrator has a proclivity to reveal events that will happen in the future. Cal is a narrator who is absorbed in how his fate has been shaped. Cal eschews a chronological telling of the story, where he shares the characters' nescience. He chooses instead to relate the story beginning with his future knowledge. Cal's genes reflect an anticipation of the future: the disclosure of his actual sex identity. Cal mimics this "genetic inevitability" by enjoining the readers to know the future prior to its occurring. Mullan observed that "[f]or the reader, apprehension predominates over surprise" as a result of this narrative style. Genres The Kirkus Reviews described Middlesex as a "virtuosic combination of elegy, sociohistorical study, and picaresque adventure", and Adam Begley