Rating: 
Summary: Did not live up to the hype
Review: I read this book for my book club and found it to be enormously over-rated. The characters were seriously underdeveloped and as a result, it was extremely difficult to invest in the flimsy plot. Although the writing style was interesting, the author wouldn't know subtlety if it hit him in the head. Eugenides had a great idea, but the development was poor and I was left feeling like little more than a rubber-necker at an accident scene with no real conception of why I had bothered looking.
Rating: 
Summary: Beyond Physical Grasp
Review: It was a cross between investigative reporting and a highly personal meditation. The subject matter was treated differently from any other readings I have come across. Though I must admit that I do not read about suicide often and have had limited experience with it. It was not depressing in the normal sense but in a nostalgic dreamlike fashion. Like having the knowledge of missing something one was never meant to have or will have. This book is a an excellent expression of teenage female angst. Eugenides brings to the reader a very real experience of suffocation and pressure throughout this story. I was often caught up in the experience of the author and had to distinguish whether this story is really about the Lisbon Girls, their acts of suicide, or about the author's own feelings of loss of an experience and knowledge he'll never have. Sometimes I thought is was about the environment the Lisbon girls lived in; their parents, the school, and the house they lived in, itself the metaphysical symbol of the dying within. When the girls attempt to save the elm, is one of the most touching scenes I've read in years. Ultimately, the story is about life and being able to live.
Rating: 
Summary: See The Movie First
Review: That Amazon compares this book with Brett Easton Ellis' boring, didactic and untidy American Psycho is distressing. While both have recently been adapted into movies - and the movies are of comparable quality - The Virgin Suicides is the work of a literary writer, not a sloppy socio-political egomaniac. Eugenides would fair well in Scrabble against Updike and Nabokov. His prose also has the hypnotic quality of some of Paul Auster's work, though a more accurate comparison would be with Auster's first wife, Lydia Davis, and her 1995 novel - The End of the Story. The reliance on primarily exposition and internal psychology in both novels seem to make their subjects more enigmatic. It's interesting that both novels reference Henry James. That's why I say you should see the movie first. The story doesn't translate that well onto the screen, but Coppola does a great job with creating mood. The hyperreal, opaque cinematography, the sountrack by AIR, and the surreal humor are all captivating. And if you know essentially what happens, you can enjoy the book for it's intricate structure and dazzling prose. Not that the book is difficult to read. I would have finished it in one sitting if I hadn't been interrupted, and while I love to read, I don't have a greatest attention span. Eugenides was included in The New Yorker's 20 under 40 novelists in last summer's fiction issue. Of that group of writers, this is the best I've read. Does anyone know when he's coming out with something new? I can't wait. (Another funny and well written coming of age novel set in 1970's suburbia - that you wish would go on longer than it does - is Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run The Frog Hospital. Does anyone know any other novels that fit this category?)
Rating:
Summary: a novel that asks questions but gives no answers
Review: If you read the "virgin suicides" expecting answers, explanations, or any kind of analysis on how 5 teenage sisters ended up commiting suicide, one after the other...you'll be disappointed. After you reach the last of the 250 very well written pages,you realise that Jeffrey Eugenides hasn't revealed anything more than you knew from page one: the only thing the reader knows is that the 5 blond, almost indistinguishable Lisbon sisters commit suicide one by one. The story is told through the eyes and ears of the neighbourhood boys. Teenage boys who are obssessed with the Lisbon sisters and watch their lives and deaths (or what they know of their lives and deaths) step by step. So, in the end, all we get to know about this tragic story, is through these teenage boys' eyes. It's like we are watching the chorus in an ancient greek tragedy: the chorus watches from afar, feels sorrow and pain, but doesn't know or reveal much. This fact of not knowing, of not understanding the whys and the hows of the story, adds an almost surreal quality to the book. Eugenides is a very gifted new author, and manages to create a great book, even though with the total absence of characterization (the 5 sisters are almost described as one single person)as well as the total absence of feeling or explanation, this could prove to be tricky. But he does it skillfully and in the end, this fact of not knowing adds to the book. A very sad, mysterious, deeply moving novel, a novel where the reader has to read between the lines to feel and understand. My only complaint was the short length of the book, but all in all: I strongly recommend it
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: THis book was a good book on a very hard subject. It was a little depressing, and hard to read at some points in the story. It would be very tragic if something like the story of the Lisbon girls really did happen. I think the author did a good job writing about a very difficult subject. I recommend this book to people who like to read and don't get depressed by books very easily.
Rating:
Summary: Unbelievably Different
Review: The Virgin Suicides would seem to be just another tragic tale of American suburbia, but Eugenides transforms it into a unique masterpiece. For starters, the story of the five Lisbon suicides is told from the perspective of an adolescent boy who, along with his friends, is obsessed with the mysterious Lisbon sisters. This gives the book an interesting, and often humorous, perspective on growing up, but only adds to the mystery surrounding the Lisbon house, as the boys have little real information to relate to the reader. One sees the Lisbon house as a depressing place to live, but can never really know its inhabitants. Cecilia's suicide attempt starts the book, but one can never understand why everything surrounding the event is so nonchalant, as though it were a preordained event. Similarly, one never really gets to know the surviving Lisbon sisters; they are all one mold, differentiated by a few images presented in various chapters. With any other author, this lack of character development would be profoundly frustrating, but Eugenides makes it work. One comes to share the obsession the neighborhood boys have for the Lisbon sisters, and the obsession, combined with the mystery surrounding the girls, makes it difficult to put the book down. Eugenides is a brilliant writer, the book is almost flawless, and, at just under 250 pages, it can be read in a sitting. I cannot recommend this title enough.
Rating:
Summary: Hope the movie doesn't f*#k it up...
Review: I must say, he copped the anonymous first-person plural voice this novel is told in almost EXACTLY from Gregory Rabassa's english translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Autumn of the Patriarch." Down to the very base rhythms of speech and narration. It's almost unnerving if you read the two books side-by-side. Nonetheless, this is America, not Colombia, and in the wasteland that passes for contemporary American letters, the odds for pulling something like this off are almost zilch, let alone for getting it published. Bravo, Mr. Eugenides! May you write 20 more.
Rating:
Summary: well worth reading
Review: The fact that it has been recently made in to a film prompted me to read it. It is a really good read. it tells in flashback of a group of boys who are obcessed with a family of girls who live across the street who all committ sucide. There parents are (over)protective and this adds to the mystery which grows around them. Although the ending can be seen from a mile off it adds to book. At the end of the book I wished that it would last longer
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Haunting.
Review: I picked up this book on a long trip and started it and got so imersed by the story I didn't want to do anything on my trip but read it. The book is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I loved the way the boys told the story of the girls because it made it much better then a story of the girls telling about the suicides and why they did them. The lives theses girls lead touched me and made me wonder about others in my life. I would tell my friends to read this book because I am glad I did. I am also glad I read it before I went to see the movie because the book I have a feeling will be much better then the movie. :)
Rating:
Summary: A bit of a stretch...
Review: I have only cried while reading twice in my life - during "A Summer to Die" and during this book. "The Virgin Suicides" is extremely frustrating and depressing to read because the reader can't help but want to reach out and help these girls. I did think the way it's portrayed (from the perspective of all the neighborhood boys) was a bit of a stretch and detracted from the overall story, but it's still a great book. Definitely worth reading!
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