The Virgin Suicides

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Summary: Into another world
Review: Ive read this book several times, each time it only grows increasingly amazing. Euginides displays incredible talent in this first novel. Through his dark humor and morbid vision, you begin to live the lives of the Lisbon girls. His breathtaking descriptions of the lives, or rather imprisonment of the sisters. Not only does he show great artistry in every flowing word, he somehow always manages to bring out new details, and new visions with each page. You quickly become engrossed in the lives of five mysteriouswomen, not girls, through the eyes of the men that loved them, and tried to sympathize with each emotion that pulsed through thier hearts. Euginides creates these shadowed angels, not by their own thoughts, but the thoughts of those who knew and grew with them through their short lives. No matter what yyou see through Euginides' eyes, you eventually fall in love with these brilliant permiscuous, mysterious girls. You have no choice but to enter into their world, and soon, you begin to realize that some things cant be explained, no matter how blaintant they are. you soon realize that that is how they exist...a mystery.

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Summary: Into a Different World
Review: Ive read this book a number of times, and each time its gets better. Every time you read a page,whether it be for the first time, or the third, you come across Euginides' dark humor and tremendous talent for bringing the Lisbon daughters to life through his own wit, and imagination. The mystery of the five young sisters launches the reader into a world of dreams, desires, permiscuity, and tragedy. This book gives you a new vision of true love, and tragic loss. Through euginides' descriptions of the life, or rather imprisonment of the girls, you can feel every emotion that passed through their subconcious. All at once, you understand being a woman, and being in love with one. This wonderfully morbid first novel expresses Jeffrey Euginides' genius to its full extent.

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Summary: Haunting and memorable
Review: It was just a beautiful book (despite not so glamorous subject matter) in describing how the girls were, or how nobody really knew them, and how they were seen by the boys obseesed with them. The way you learn about the characters little by little kept me reading and it really seemed like a memory, and some actions are never really explained so i kept thinking about the characters long after i finished it. definetly a great book, one of those you just have to read to understand. without that, its just "oh yeah, they die right?"

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Summary: The Virgin Suicides is even better than the movie!
Review: I saw the movie six months ago and loved it. Naturally I read the book. Better than the movie. Read it, live it, love it! Euginides Deserves a frikin' Pulitzer.

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Summary: The Suicide Swan Song
Review: In what is one of the most beautiful explorations into the teenage psyche Eugenides provides the dark and often morbid truth. In viewing the five Lisbon girls every reader can see a part of themselves. From the first pages you are drawn into a world of prom dresses mixed with meloncolly thoughts, a teenagers struggles for freedoms combined with a mothers domineering ways. You helplessly watch as the once lovely and cheerful girls slowly deteriorate into nameless oblivion. I eagerly await Eugenides next book.

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Summary: Liquid Poetry
Review: This book was excellent. If you liked the movie, read the book and you'll understand so much more. The author describes the scenes to every last detail in this depressing but real novel. Teenage obsession and how far it will go.

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Summary: Heartwrenching & Beautiful
Review: The Virgin Suicides is a powerful and beautifully written story of five sisters destined to fate. The suicide of the youngest sister, Cecilia, spreads the poison in the air, which inaugurates the persistent preoccupation the young men have with the sisters. The Lisbon sisters simply bewitch the young men, as well as the reader. You will follow the boys in their intriguing journey with the girls through love, lust, sex, and their captivating demise. Author, Jeffrey Eugenides, has the natural aptitude to write such a penetrating and enigmatic tale, which will leave you spellbound. The Virgin Suicides is unquestionably a magnificent novel that you will never want to put down.

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Summary: What A Great Book!!
Review: The story The Virgin Suicides is one that is mysterious and attention grabbing. The characters and stories that take place are truly genuine. A tale of youth, love and death. The group of boys who watch the Libson girls witness almost firsthand the deaths of them all. They later meet with their father while they try to uncover the mystery of their untimely deaths. The girls all commit suicide after the first and youngest of them, Cecilia, kills herself. I thought this story to be pure and sad at the same time, because of the mystery. But I couldn't seem to put it down because I feared I'd miss the answer to the question that plagued me throughout the novel; why did the girls commit such an act?. I recommend this novel to anyone thirsty for a story about life, and love.

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Summary: The calm before the storm...
Review: There are few words that can describe the emotional charge and fury behind The Virgin Suicides, the first and only novel to come from Jeffery Eugenides. Puzzling and frightening from the first page, which provides that Cecilia, the youngest sister of the Lisbon family has attempted suicide. The reader is simply unable to keep the pages from turning. Written through the fascination of teenage boys who watched the remaining Lisbon girls slowly descend into mortality, we are taken into a world that was uncharted by anyone of this universe. Even the girls who starred in their own lives were seemingly mystical creatures floating in their own oblivion. The Virgin Suicides explores not only the sudden yet predicted deaths of the five blue eyed, blonde sisters, but the stunted lives they had only began. However, it does so in a way that is at times irritatingly vague, yet beautifully and mysteriously crafted. Eugenides never enlightens us to the true personalities of the Lisbon sisters, nor does he shed much light on their inevitable suicides. The book describes a force, whose nature was rooted the unexplainable, but was deafeningly present. Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the novel is our lack of understanding of the Lisbon girls.
One of the most compelling scenes that predicted their lives being led astray by the unknown is the night the four remaining Lisbon girls, Lux, Bonnie, Therese, and Mary, were allowed to attend the Homecoming Dance. Their ill-fated flight for freedom started out awkward as most adolescent dates do. The boys struggled to pin corsages without impaling their fair dates. Eventually settling in to their accustomed roles, the girls let down their mystiques and revealed how fabulously normal they were. Chatting like girls do about all the events and subjects that surrounded them, their unassuming dates were shocked that the girls hardly lived up to the rumors. But this would be the end of the girl's spat with freedom. After Lux broke curfew that very night because she had stayed out to make love on the football field with Trip Fontaine, the girls were withdrawn from school and society. Lux, the exotic younger sister, and Trip Fontaine, the stunning heartthrob, are the two most developed characters in the novel. Always referred to as "Trip Fontaine" in the text, the boys describe their yearning desire to become Trip. He had seen things they only dreamed of. Trip would become engulfed by Lux's simultaneous vivacity and sheer emptiness. Like the boys who narrate the novel, Trip Fontaine's mind was infiltrated by Lux and her charming beauty. After the girls are under lock down, signs of life from the Lisbon house are rare, yet exhilarating. They discovered that Lux would lead men and boys to her rooftop where they would have sex. The boys were shocked by her willingness to risk exposure. The author may be depicting more than an adolescent desire for sex. Atop her house, Lux was making up for the love she couldn't find in her home. Through the physical description of the decaying Lisbon house, Eugenides mimics the spiritual state of the girls.
There seem to be a lack of events leading up to their eventual, simultaneous suicides. The girls teased the narrators with their presence only to end their lives that very night. After their bodies are discovered, the paramedics must make several trips to the Lisbon house to retrieve the girls' limp shells. Each time, moving a bit slower, knowing just as the reader does, that there is no life remaining the house.
The Lisbon girls, methodically ending their lives, left more questions that answers. Remaining now is only the shadows that haunt their former house and the men who have grown with nothing in their hearts but the fantasy of the Lisbon girls.

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Summary: Review of "The Virgin Suicides"
Review: "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides is a novel about five young girls who all committed suicide in the 1970s. It is narrated by one of their male neighbors, who was completely infatuated with the girls. The girls were the daughters of the Lisbons. There was Cecilia, who was thirteen, Lux, the fourteen year-old, Bonnie, the fifteen year-old, Mary, who was sixteen, and the seventeen year-old, Therese. They lived in a two story home in a wealthy suburb. The girls were restricted from doing just about anything. Their parents were very strict and enforced Christianity upon the girls. The girls were never allowed to talk to or date boys, wear make-up, or tight clothing. In fact, on Sunday mornings, Lux, would often be asked to go inside and change into something less revealing.
The story displays the impressions everyone in the town had of the girls. One by one the Lisbon girls committed suicide in the comforts of their own home. Cecilia, the youngest, was first. She jumped out of the second story window and landed on a fence. At her funeral it was said that the other Lisbon girls were expressionless and did not show any signs of emotion. They did not even shed a tear. One of the women of the town said people should have realized the fate of the other Lisbon girls by the way they acted when their sister died. The other girls throughout the course of the story took their lives. Mary had to try twice. First she stuck her head in the oven but survived, so she finally took an overdose of sleeping pills. Like Mary, Therese overdosed on pills as well. Bonnie hung herself from a tree, and Lux suffocated herself in a car. The story, although about a sad and touchy subject was compelling to read. Eugenides choice of words and writing was phenomenal.