How does the author use metaphor in the novel, Middlesex?

Metaphors are used to create vivid imagery; particularly potent is the recurring image of thread, unspooling from Desdemona’s silkworms and down the generations, manifesting in the yarn streaming from the ship as the Stephanides sail away from Greece forever; in the myth of the Minotaur as a means for Theseus to find his way out of the maze; in the sperm traveling to the egg that creates Cal; in the invisible umbilical cord Tessie feels connecting her to her children. This imagery echoes with the symbolic resonance of thread as a connecting device through time and space.