The Virgin Suicides

Rating:
Summary: An eerie, poetic novel
Review: The tone for The Virgin Suicides is set on the first page, where the reader meets the Lisbon girls. Mary with sleeping pills, like Therese, Cecilia "afloat in her pink pool" with open wrists, other sisters dangling from a rope or closed in an oven. Though this is how we meet the sisters, the book brings them to life, even if only from a distance.

The narrators, neighbors of the Lisbons, all teenage boys, all morbidly in love, watch the girls. They stare from across the street at their windows, watch the girls' parents prune the yard. They call them on the phone and play them records instead of speaking. They manage to take the girls to a school dance, each sister in an over-sized homemade dress.

As the novel progresses, the girls become more scarce. The smell of their house is described, its wilting siding and crumbling roof stenchy, even from across the street. The boys don't see the Lisbon girls at school, but instead they see Lux on the roof, having sex with delivery boys or strange men.

Eugenides's novel is about five girls locked up in a house, four boys who think they know them. It captures perfectly the humidity of summer, the smell of shampoo, and the quiet longing that adolescents feel for each other.

In the end are the suicides, which the reader expects from the very beginning. And though the reader never *really* knows the Lisbon girls, they know them through the boys, who linger on every blond hair, every scent, and every glimpse through a window.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting mix of tragedy and humor
Review: This is the kind of book that cannot be put down, or taken lightly by the reader, and one which almost leaves a gritty residue on the reader, immersing them in the tale of the Lisbon sisters. Beautifully written, it is captivating to the last, a book which I read in one sitting, unable to remove myself from the story. It strikes an especially deep chord with me, as it takes place in the city of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, my home town. Jeffrey Eugenides actually grew up here, and his references to the city, the social inequalities, and even the story's school itself (containing very obvious references to Eugenides' actual high school) all hold true today, and would evoke a laugh from any person who has actually driven through the local spots mentioned in the book, or has seen the patches of grass remaining in the void of trees cut down during the 70's Dutch Elm scare. Indeed, this book is a must for any Grosse Pointer, and highly recommended to high school students, adults, anybody...this really is a great book, and will leave you wondering, mourning, and most importantly, thinking. Read this book...it is one of my all time favorites.

Rating:
Summary: Sensory Detail
Review: I took an educational opportunity to read this book and would now like to read more of Eugenides' works. The title would indicate a gloomy tale, but rather, it is one filled with sensory detail and emotion. The way that Eugenides captures the action of story though appealing to all five senses gives the reader even more of an image than the movie can do justice. I was drawn into the action of the plot and just wanted to keep reading more. The novel is entertaining and filled with a different, yet appealing, kind of action and drama appropriate for the youthful characters of the suburbs. I would, though, recommend this novel for the mature reader because of it's content and subject matter.

Rating:
Summary: witty, but unfullfilling
Review: 'The Virgin Suicides' by Eugenides caught my eye on the best-sellers rack at Borders. I heard about the movie coming out, so curiously purchased the book with spare dollars. This book is fairly short, but is indeed an excellent read. Eugenides has an excellent style of writing, its witty, stinging, histerical, lyrical and revealing. Eugenides describes some things so perfectly i just gaped at it for a while and laughed heartily. The story isn't perfect though, and left me unsatisfied and confused. The book is told through the eyes of a teenage boy in the 70s, living on the elm-lined street of suburbia gone wrong, when shaken by the suicides of 5 sisters. Why do the girls commit suicide? It never says. I went into the book, expecting a pyschology epic, and came out with more questions than ever. It is still deffinetly worth a read for Eugenides writing style. I can see this book having a cult following...

Rating:
Summary: Silent Puzzle
Review: I read this book a few summers ago, and I feel a mysterious urge to read it again. What I loved about this book was, for one, the silence. As I read, I heard only the narrator, a teenage boy in the 70's who is one of a few young boys who are inexplicably obsessed with the Lisbon girls. The whole neighborhood seemed deadly quiet, and it put the whole novel in a vacuum. I was literally watching an artsy silent movie in my head.
Another thing I like about this book is that it presents major questions about life, death, and which one suburbia is. And it doesn't try to answer them. It sort of accepts our inability to completely understand the things that happen.
In the end, this novel leaves you with an eerie sense of calm. I would strongly recommend it to anyone seeking a peaceful reading oasis of a book.

Rating:
Summary: Not nearly as good as "Middlesex"
Review: "Middlesex" by Eugenides is one of the best books I have read in the past couple years. This book hardly seemed like it was by the same author. The things that made "Middlesex" great (character development, humor, multiple story lines) are all conspicuously absent here. "The Virgin Suicides" instead is dreamy and distant, with muddy, floating characters and a rather undeveloped plot. There are glimpses of a better novel at times in the book, but overall, I thought this book was just okay.

The main thing lacking in this book is a central, sympathetic character. I am still not sure who anyone in the book actually was...why did the girls commit suicide? why were they so fascinating? i have little more than an inkling after reading the whole book.

Perhaps if I had read this before "Middlesex" I would be more impressed.

Rating:
Summary: Death Among Us
Review: I chose to read The Virgin Suicides as an English assignment and in reading the book I then had to watch the film and write about something that intrigued me. It could either be how they were similar or how they were different and how differing pieces from the novel and the film had an impact on the plot or strength of what it was all about.

I rated this book as a 4 because I thought that Jeffrey Eugenides did an excellent job of portraying life as it was like for many young women back in the 70's when this book took place and as a result often ended in a tragic way. Even though it is not clearly laid out and printed in words for you as to why the book ends as it does we all can interpret for ourselves why and I believe that we would all come up with the same answer.

In reading the book and watching the film I found that Sophia Coppola, director of the Paramount pictures classic, portrayed the lives of the young girls and the Lisbon parents in a very similar fashion as did Jeffrey Eugenides as to not change the true meaning of what the book was expressing. In fact the film is almost an exact replica of what happens in the book with silimar dialogue and chain of events. If you pay close attention little details were left out of the film but nothing that I found that drastically changed what Eugenides was trying to say. As I examined both pieces closely in an attempt to write a paper relating the two in some way or another one thing stood out to me. If you get a chance, notice the way that the relationships that the girls have with the neighborhood boys is different. However, I'm sure that all of you would agree with me, but I found that what Eugenides was trying to portray as a dreamy, fantasy-like friendship with the unattainable Lisbon girls in the book was more tangible and realistic in the film. For that reason I expected the ending of Coppola's film to have somewhat of a different ending considering the fact that their relationship seemed more friendly and that they actually had contact with one another.

But in review as a whole, I pretty much enjoyed the book. It seemed very really to me and I'm sure it is a topic that many people touch on whetehr it be from personal experience or being around a similar situation with someone you know or love.

Rating:
Summary: Much better than Middlesex
Review: Eugenides works magic with tone and perspective in this novel, but don't be scared off by the high-minded accolades. "Virgin Suicides" is suspenseful, well-written and supremely entertaining, and you'll be hard-pressed to put it down. Perhaps the author's supreme achievement is evoking a childhood in the suburbs in the 1970s: you'll swear you can see the technicolor and smell the polyester. Transplanted into this setting are the Lisbon sisters, who seem both out of place and out of time. The reader never quite gets what's going on with the sisters, but that's the point, and Eugenides beautifully manages to tell the story without giving away too much. If you enjoyed this book, try Stephen Millhouser's "Knife Thrower" for a similar spooky and detached tone with even more outlandish goings-on.

Rating:
Summary: The Virgin Suicides
Review: The Lisbon girls, all five of whom committed suicide in the early 1970s, haunt the memories of boys next door in a wealthy Detroit suburb. A nameless narrator, one of the boys, 20 years later collects and weaves together the impressions that friends, neighbors, and parents had of the dead girls. Except for school and group outings to two ill-fated parties, the girls' lives played out confined to their dwelling, a cloistered existence protected by a mother vigilant for their virtue and by a meek father cowed by his feminized surroundings. Did those surroundings spur Cecilia to throw herself from a window, sending the house into a degenerating gloom that bottomed out with the final exits of the final four? One of the boys, a Twelve Stepper now who made it with the bad girl of the bunch, can't settle his addled mind on a theory, but the rest remember the time, place, and sightings of the pretty Lisbons with the magnified focus of their very furtiveness. The evocative reconstruction props up the adolescent atmospherics of that time (the author is now age 32) as much as it ostensibly dissects the tragedy, which the author's alter ego narrator finds is sadly unfathomable anyway. After this distinctive debut, Eugenides' second effort should reveal if he can expand his appeal beyond his generation.

Rating:
Summary: great writing
Review: I read this book in a matter of a few days and greatly enjoyed the experience. while I must say that the plot was very strange and yes, somewhat disturbing, this book gets a high rating from me because the writing was simply incredible. eugenides totally reels you into the world of this sleepy michigan town and the lives of each of the girls. the attention to detail and seemingly mundane things especially helped make this a great reading experience. recommended for those who can handle somewhat strange plots.