The Virgin Suicides

Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: Here is what is innovative and cool about this novel:

1) A subject matter that is really pretty interesting (and rather creative).

2) A cool setting (yay - 70's suburbia).

3) An exciting form of narration (a collective second person, used more often in a few really good short stories than in novels like this, but still, pretty fun, and well executed)/ Here is what is slightly less cool:

1) Characters who you sort of care about, but not really.

2) A lot of unanswered questions (which would sort of be the point of this book to answer).

3) The raising of issues which are commonly raised in literature.

It is a fun read - and better than the movie. Still. Nothing brilliant. I read it on an airplane, which may account for my lack of enjoyment, but it was first class, so I doubt it.

Rating:
Summary: Like a prayer
Review: "The Virgin Suicides" is a poetic and lyrical novel. With the Catholic sensibility, it reads like an epic poem or a prayer. It's also funny, in the sense of being humorous, but also funny in the sense of being peculiar. The central characters are the Lisbon girls, overprotected by their strict parents. But this novel is not just for women. The narrator is a grown man looking back on his teenage years. Any male who grew up in the 70's, in the suburbs, and went to Catholic school (this reader is guilty on all charges) will immediately recognize and identify with his point of view. It's wistful, combining both longing and irony. Moreover, he's mystified by the sexuality of the Lisbon girls, who remain distant (not only to him but the reader). While the title gives away the climax of the book, it doesn't matter. The deaths of the girls are allegorical, and like much else in this fine book, are not unlike an event in a magic realist novel.

Rating:
Summary: A book you can't put down!
Review: The book The Virgin Suicides was a decent book. When I first started to read it I just wanted to stop because it went on and on about Cecilia. After the reader gets about half way through the book it starts to get good. Like the kind of book the reader can not put down, the reader just has to keep reading it. The plot to the book was well written and stuck to the same ideas and themes through out the entire book. The part I liked the most would have to be how Eugenides chose to have a variety of differences in it; for example, it has humor, terror, death, and even love. There are not many books like this. A book needs this, it keeps you thinking what is gonna happen next you never know if you have a mixture of these. I would recomend this book to anyone who enjoys any of these differences I have mentioned above. It is a great book as long as you do not give up on it toward the begining half.

Rating:
Summary: Possession Part Deux
Review: Never trust anyone who told you he or she heard about this book through the A&F Quarterly. This person obviously can't think for himself, and he or she probably looked over his/her shoulder to see if liking this book was o.k. with everyone else.

For those of you with open minds, this book will be one that will change your life. For many young men, there is a point in our lives when we feel infatuation for a particular girl. We become consumed by it in a manner that is unlike any other we have known before. In 99.9% of the cases, we never get the girl in the end, but we spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture the feelings we held for that one luminous beauty who was never meant to be ours. There is a purity in that love that causes it to be misunderstood, to be termed obsession. This book is the perfect summation of those feelings. For us the tragedy is that the girl grew up, dated fraternity boys and years later divorced from a loveless marriage. Given the chance, we would all take her to us and comfort her, and spend ever moment trying to bring her to the home in our hearts that we've built and tended to from the moment we saw her.

This is what the boys experience in TVS. Only, their beloved Lisbon sisters never had the future that our loves were granted. This book will make you smile, make you cry, and most important, make you realize that you were not alone in the way you catalogued and filed away every piece of information about the girl you were swept away by. As Eugenides writes:

"Years later, we would see one another at cocktail parties and business luncheons, but instead of standing around, talking about current events and our children, we would find ourselves off in the corner, going over the evidence one more time."

Long live the Lisbon sisters, and long live The Virgin Suicides.

Rating:
Summary: page turner
Review: All you need to know of the storyline of this book is written in the first paragraph, which sets the scene. You know there are five sisters who, by the end of the book, will exist no more.

All the pages inbetween are detailed almost as if the boy narrating the story has become a detective in later life. His knowledge of the details surrounding the girls is thoroughly researched and documented.

Even though you know the ending of the story it is still engrossing, searching for the 'whys' and 'hows'.

Rating:
Summary: That's the problem...
Review: Yes, the story's about the boys, not the girls. That's the problem. When female humans are reduced to being mere picturesque contrivances in the oh-so-important angst o' the guys, the story's doomed. (Same thing happens in Native Son -- the deaths of women are important only because they impact men. Yeah, right. When are we going to outgrow this male-centered yawnfest?) (Do see the movie, BTW. Sofia Coppola succeeds in showing how the girls are just social kleenex the boys, and everybody else around them, use up for their own purposes.)

Rating:
Summary: A touching story about lives leading to early deaths
Review: I have seen the movie before I had ever heard of the book and shortly after having seen the movie I went to by the book. I thought at the beginning that th book could harly be better, but it was much better, because Jeffrey Eugenides did not try to paint a picture of the parents of the five sisters, but left them as any parents, maybe stricter than average parents but not to extraordinary. And why do you need everything totally created. in my oppinion reading should make your phantasy flow and help you create characters your own way and not exactly the way the author thought them up. I always have my own movie while reading and usually after reading a book I don't even want to see the film to it. but maybe that's not everybody's way of reading. For me it is one of the best books I have read lately.

Rating:
Summary: Attempt at sensual mythology...not a classic
Review: I can see why people might like this book, sex and suicide are always romantic prospects for books attempting to be literature, although I must admit that I am not one of the admirers. Having known a group of brothers who committed suicide, I expected to find a novel of greater depth and nuance, but, sadly, I must confess that I was disappointed. In The Virgin Suicides Eugenides mythologizes suicide in a manner that is neither great art nor creativity, and manages, in the process, to ignore the sickening tragedy and the horror that suicide has on survivors and on a community. If the work is meant to be a memoir it fails in capturing the emotional pulse of suicide survivors; if the work is sheer fiction, it fails in character development and multiplicity of layering. Eugenides has a preoccupation with adolescent desire, and as a result, he undermines the should-be focus of the book, the fact that five sisters kill themselves, and the heartbreaking memory and mystique that would grip survivors. Sex and stealing bloody tampons are the preoccupation, not death. In so doing he insults the intelligence and the depth of teenagers who would live in the wake of the horror. The overwhelming disturbance of the suicides, would make such teenage obsessions trite, among teenagers. (I know few teenagers who would boast about "copping a feel" of a girl, who committed suicide, while she is laying in her coffin. I'm sorry but despite what some critics may think, that is not black humor; that is just bad taste. If you want good black humor read Flannery O'Connor or watch Heathers.) I had the impression that Eugenides was trying to leave the suicides in the background, assuming that the act alone would be enough to capture a reader's imagination, and that he was attempting to insert black humor as a device to suggest how deeply the participants were affected. In my opinion, he fails miserably in his efforts. The members of the community come across as insensitive and uncaring. The boys come across as sex obsessed idiots who haven't the slightest notion about love, and since I have the impression that the book is attempting to be serious literature, I find it even more insulting. Where books such as The Bell Jar and Girl,Interrupted succeed in capturing the nuances of tragedy, misery and confusion coupled with the witticism and dryness of life and the mundane, The Virgin Suicides fails.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: "The Virgin Suicides" is one of the first books that I have ever enjoyed reading. Most books that I read have a storyline that is not interesting. This book deals with serious issues but discusses them in a manner that does not offend or scare people. It really catches peoples attention. In todays society with all the violence it tells a story that sounds real and could really happen. This books makes people realize what they have and how they could lose it all in a very short time. It relates to people of all ages. For instance, the older generation can relate to Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon and their feelings towards the suicides or thier own children or other children. The teenage generation can relate to the Lisbon daughters and the boys that tell the story. Also, the obession with the Lisbon daughters relates to teenagers. I recommend this book to anyone that loves to read a book with a plot that makes you keep reading. It is very entertaining with suspense that does not let you put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Charming, addicting tale of love, obsession, and death.
Review: This lyrical, magical book is one you'll devour front to back. Its beautiful words flow from the page like smooth butter, and at the end you'll be aching for more. This is my favorite book and I probably could--and will--read it over and over. I recommend it to anyone who can appreciate that things are not what they seem...people that don't think the idea of the plot of the VS is "stupid" and "weird." If you liked the movie or were intrigued by the promo for the movie, you'll love the book.