Rating: 
Summary: A surprising materpiece
Review: I picked up the book in a local bookstore before the media here started paying attention to the play, which has recently opened in Brazil. First of all, I was amused by the title. What would a vagina have to say? As a man, I could understand some female sensitivities, since men are a minority in my family. The Brazilian edition of the book has a microphone placed in front of a female pubis, and that surely looked funny to me. I showed it to my wife, but she didn't have much of a positive reaction due to her conservative upbringing(she tries, though), but when I read her one of the stories she was amused A few weeks later "The Vagina Monologues"was all the rage here. The Brazilian version of the play(directed and adapted by actor/director Miguel Falabella) opened in Rio de Janeiro, and suddenly everyone was talking about it. Even Eve Ensler, the author of the play, gave an interview to a local newsmagazine directed to the female public. One could not turn on the TV or open a newspaper without stumbling into a Vagina Monologues comment. I havent (as of this writing) yet seen the play, but I found reading the book very enjoyable. It is a collection of very short stories related to various vagina-related subjects, such as the discovery of pleasure, childbirth, and even rape. There are also a few facts of the vagina world. Personally, there are two favorite stories, in my opinion. The first is a married woman who dislikes having her pubic hairs shaved - she feels like a child when it is done to her, and the story on rape; the metaphorical description is so clear that brings tears to one's eyes. As any other collection, there are also a bad moments - the introductiuon is sometimes annoying, for it reads like an outdated sixties feminist chant - but, all in all, the play, as a reading piece, is utterly enjoyable. Bottom line: A good piece for both women and men, regardless of sexual option
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Wonderful!
Review: Of all the books that I have read, this one made the picture of me, a little more clearer. I believe that Eve Ensler is a magnificient author, despite what others think, and needs to be praised for what she has written in these 118 pages. I feel free now, and have a since of understanding. No other book has touched me like this one. It made me laugh, made me cry, and above all made me see. I would recommend this book to anyone, male or female.
Rating: 
Summary: An Unimaginative Play by an Unreasonable Creature
Review: So, you don't have to a feminist to fall in love with this trite little volume of childish, misandrist cant? Well, as a feminist, I can see how such a conclusion could be drawn. After all, Ensler asserts in her introduction, the vagina is a woman's "most essential place." In the closing monologue, excerpts of which I dare not quote here, the vagina takes on the attributes of the human heart, by which is meant the soul. As I, a saucer-eyed naif, consider the progress made in womankind's struggle for parity with the opposite sex, I can think of nothing worse than for a woman to logically reduce herself to a single albeit vital) part of her anatomy. So much more important than even the means of pleasure and procreation should be the means by which meaningful connections are forged between people, where ideas are, how shall I say it?, engendered: a vital organ both men and women possess. Of course, you really can't romanticise the cerebrum, and I haven't the faintest idea of how you're supposed to stroke and fondle the two intangibles of mind and soul. Of course, on the dark side of the planet Ensler, conventional wisdom must be that women really aren't the Reasonable Creatures this university student has always believed we could be. The tenacious and self-educated Mary Wollstonecraft? Who was she? (Well, not a former tax lawyer, for starters...) Sure, I kept an open mind. For me, The Female Eunuch (Greer) and Sexual Personae (Paglia) gave the concept of female sexuality artistic and political dimensions I had never previously considered before having encountered them several months ago. Also, having read that TVM contained, among other things, the testimony of Bosnian rape victims, I was confident that what would follow Gloria Steinem's New Age-ish introduction would be a mature and thought-provoking examination of the subject of female sexuality, still a societal taboo elsewhere in the world. Silly me. Nothing prepared me for that dreadful feeling of suffocation that followed Steinem's only briefly insightful pages. Reason and faith, logic and mysticism take a back seat to sentimentality and childish polemic. (Greer's polemics, of course, are charged with a humor and exuberance utterly lacking here.) Also profoundly felt, in spite of the cuddly atmosphere of the odd support group, is a certain narcissism. It isn't simply that men are relegated to the hackneyed role of sinister Other. (I don't cry for them. As a left handed feminist, I would assure male readers that Otherness proves its own reward.)In this play, women are merely helpers in the quest for instant self-gratification. It would be ludicrous to charge the act of lovemaking with the significance of a cosmic convergence (not to mention immature), but the moment you cast aside that all-important Forsterian directive to "Only connect" (engaging, as it does, the mind rather than the reproductive organs) you've lost this gentle reader for good and all. Still, I wonder how well a David Mamet homage to the phallus would be recieved. (Even now, I fear for the safety of Messrs. Amis and Mailer. But I digress.) Of course, you may protest, surely one can agree to disagree and evaluate the play on its own artisitc merits? Well, of course I would, if it had any to begin with. But, as Paglia laments in her latest column, Ensler's is a "dreary, pedestrian, unliterary mind." If I were an ascendant playwright like Eve Ensler, I'd forgo any future visits to former tax lawyers, with all their attendant vindictiveness, and consider instead the consolations of literature and philosophy. The missionary fervor of TVM is testamentary to the fact that the coupling of the personal and the political is, at best, awkward and, at its platitudinous worst, base and dehumanising.
Rating: 
Summary: Get used to it
Review: To bear no shame was a generous bit of knowledge instilled in me at a youthful age. I was raised to say vagina. It came out easily; it was spoken in our home with mom and pop voices. Ms. Ensler reminds us to say it and say it proud. I read this book in one sitting. The voices of the characters all played sharply in my head. Some of the stories were curiously similar. Others read as different from me as East and West coasts. I appreciated them the most. Eve Ensler writes with a sharp eye for detail and voice. I hope to catch a live version of her work.
Rating:
Summary: life changing work of art
Review: incredible book that truly changed the way i view my body and those around me! i can not wait to see her perform this piece live!
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to be a feminist to love it!
Review: Even a conservative from the midwest can applaud Ms. Ensler for this important gift to women! How sad that this subject has been untouchable for so long. This work gives women and all those who truly love and seek to understand them a new perspective on much more than anatomy and sexuality. In a society that values what is "appropriate"and "normal" over what is honest and real- this piece of literature was desperately needed.
Rating: 
Summary: good book but
Review: There IS a place for this book, for the usual feminist political reasons, as there are still too many women languishing in ignorance and fear. But I found the book to be disingenuous and self-serving at spots. For example, in the section about female circumcision in Africa the author failed to mention that it's women who do this to other women. It's old women who teach younger women to do this. Perhaps it would have been embarassing to point out that Sisterhood might not be uniform or consistent with Western preconceptions: damned if my book will sacrifice politics for facts! And it would have been interesting to include a bit of monologue about American attempts to "educate" women in Africa about how horrible we think their custom is, and the extent to which African women care about what American women think of them. I suppose the laughter (or confusion) of African women would have made for a rather counter-productive monologue.
Rating:
Summary: women's voices, women's parts
Review: i loved this book, a welcome addition to my library of women's works about pride and sexuality! as for the style, i enjoyed it greatly, it really added strength and power to the words.
Rating:
Summary: A romp of a read--feminism can be fun...and funny.
Review: This fast reading work was able to make important feministpoints while maintaining a sense of humor. Each time we read the word"vagina" it gets less uncomfortable--less shameful. The author is helping to innoculate us. I'm going to be seeing Ms. Ensler perform her work and I am looking forward to it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most liberating books I've ever read.
Review: This book is a life changer. I read it six months ago and I cannot believe how much it has liberated me and my attitude towards my body. Like everyone says, you cannot put it down once you begin reading it. Ensler talks about the things I've kept hidden. I never knew just how central to my life my vagina is. A chapter about menstruation, my god, people talk about this? A chapter about orgasm and hair and the fear we have of our own body. The part we never like to talk about. The chapter on birth is amazing, and until then I never knew how complex the woman's vagina is. For a woman of 22, this is a very important read. If you ever get to see her read from The Vagina Monologues, go. She puts on an amazing show. Some people think it's simple but I feel it's life-changing. I would be a very different person without it and not many books can have that kind on impact.
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