Rating: 
Summary: mediocre craftsmanship
Review: Some decent prose here and there, but this is just another meandering piece on grieving taken to absurd extremes. There's no dramatic tension to hold the reader's attention. There is weak use of subplots. Point-of-view shifts almost nonsensically. The author bores us with his thinly disguised homosexual fantasizing by way of the pointless elaboration of various male bit-players. All-in-all, not a very good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun in a voyeuristic kind of way...
Review: Like the Greek chorus of narrating neighborhood boys, you'll get sucked in by the plight of the five Lisbon daughters. The whole family is pretty bonkers, but the beauty and fragility of the mysterious children makes you want to know who they really are and why their lives are so bizarre. With these neighborhood boys, you scrounge beyond the dark, obscuring veil for scraps of truth and reason, but don't get very far. It's at once tantalizing and frustrating, like most good mysteries in life. Beyond this, though, the story is almost too strange to warrant investment. You aren't allowed any real answers...come to think of it, you can't really come up with any good questions, either, as the whole story seemed too contrived to deserve logical interest. The psychological issues that would obviously have to be pertinent in a real-life situation anywhere near as serious as the Lisbons' are remarkably absent - ignored or purposefully neutered even in the present-day musings of the narrator, who seems more content to moan and cry over the 'demise' of Grosse Pointe, which is piquant ridiculousness at best. This forces me to ask the question - do you guys actually CARE what happened here and why? Or would you rather just sit around and mope because you never got what you wanted out of life? Many of the author's 'authentic' cultural and geographical details seem outmoded, out of place, and at times, completely disingenuous. Perhaps the intent was to present a snapshot of life as it had once been perceived by a small group of people living in a certain time and place, but it just didn't ring true at all. Life goes on. Worlds go on. Even for Greeks, whom Eugenides would like to paint as a "moody people." In all, I get the sense that the author wants to inject daily life with more drama and angst than even this Greek Goth Girl has patience for.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully written book by Eugenides
Review: This is a book in which style at times trumps content. I found the narration and lyrical style of writing to be mesmerizing. The basic story is about a family of girls growing up in very restrictive household. As they are gradually allowed to interact with children their age, the story unfolds into tragedy. I enjoyed this book for its beautiful writing and a compelling story.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: The story of five sisters who all commit suicide ion one year seems like it would be a big downer, but it's not, and in fact is very funny in places.One of the most interesting things to me about this novel was how little we actually know, if anything, about the narrator. Instead he serves his purpose almost as a Greek chorus, presenting the facts and being close enough to the epicenter of the storm to folow the tragic events closely.
I read almost the whole book in one sitting, and it has lingered with me long after I've finished it. I enjoyed "Middlesex" more than this, however this is a haunting and well written first novel that at times is as funny as it is sad..
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and Absolutely Amazing
Review: "The Virgin Suicides" was an abosolutely amazing and haunting book. The passages from it still remain with me and it is some of the most beautiful writing I have seen. What I found very interesting was at the end when the teenage boys (now middle aged men) who were obsessed with the girls find out that as much as they knew about the girls' favorite songs and how they're room looked like and who they went to Homecoming with, they truly knew nothing about them as people or the thoughts that went through their mind. As much material matter that they collected as to try to better understand them and get mentally closer to them, there was still a piece of the puzzle missing therefore leaving that they hardly knew the girls at all. Well after their demise they were still as big of a mystery as they were when they were alive. I highly recommend this book. The dreary and melancholy setting that the author creates is magnificent.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I read "Middlesex" first and was disappointed by the "Virgin Suicides". I did not find the sisters as engaging as I had hoped and struggled to get through this. I wouldn't spend the time on this one.
Rating:
Summary: narrator is a psychopath!!!
Review: plenty of people have reviewed the substance of this novel so far, so no need for that. what nobody seems to note is that the narrator is an obsessive, stalking psychopath. You have to wonder if his (and his friends, if they weren't imaginary) stalking had something to do with the girls going nuts. Probably not, but it's interesting to think about. This dude is scary. I mean, he was keeping stuff from the girls long before they started killing themselves. He was a freak. Scary. Oh and I can't beleive how many people don't seem to get the point of this novel: if you lock up teenagers, you will kill them (figuratively, and maybe literally on occasion). They need to act a little crazy and experience the world. if you stifle them, you will make it worse.
Rating:
Summary: Good Work
Review: Well-written and haunting, the beauty lies in the narration. I found myself never getting quite close enough or intimate with the subjects of the story, never truly becoming a part of their world - but that's the point. One feels like an outsider peering in. It's a sad tale, from the first sentence, but oddly enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible, but unwittingly serves as a warning.
Review: I don't feel the need to expound the plot of "The Virgin Suicides", ... so I will continue assuming that the reader is familiar with the plot of Jeffrey Eugenides' debut novel. I believe that this novel does posses a deeper meaning than the crust appearance of the demise of the Lisbon girls, and I see it as a tribute to adolescence - how fleeting, beautiful, luminous, and captivating it is of those who have outgrown their own youth. In that respect, the story is well aligned with its underlying concept; but it is that concept itself which I disagree with. To begin with, it is hardly a profound idea, and contributes little to an observation already made innumberable times, moreover that it is little asserted what this aspect of life means to the author. "Youth is fleeting". What of it? Is this a good or bad thing? The book is intended to orbit about the elusive mindsets of the Lisbon girls, but if you examine it from a different vantage point, it unwittingly paints a picture of the futility of chasing youth. The men who document the life and times of Bonnie, Mary, Therese, Lux, and Cecilia are the vehicles by which thoughts are to be provoked, with their probing questions to which no answers exist, but consider the situation: a small group of boys, now men, have wasted a half life in pondering over the seductive mystery of the Lisbon sisters. Even decked out in the garb of middle age, they return to the site of their youth to mourn a stale tragedy. Onlookers always to the travesty of Lisbon life and beauty, these boys were men, always - observing vibrant youth from behind plexiglass, worshipping supple adolescence from afar. As these boys begin to age and grow away from their hometown, describing their experiences, it becomes suddenly evident that they have devoted their entire lives to looking in on the Lisbon girls, even after they became a physical memory. These men have gone through the motions of life, but all the way have neglected to live in what exists in the now. As the book draws to a close and the reader is supposed to feel the potency of the men's question ("Who were the Lisbon girls?"), I could only see the tragic portrait of these lives wasted - the survivors unwilling to live. These men have wasted their lives peering back at an unchanging memory and an unanswerable question, leaving their own existence to decompose at the wayside. This novel tries to convey how quick, sharp, and beautiful youth is, but in doing so it is quietly overshadowed by the fact that forsaking your youth as it ends is infinitely better than spending all of one's short existence trying to retrieve it. These men have never truly, really /lived/. This may have been a highly poignant message, was the author himself not equally as guilty as his characters.
Rating:
Summary: A sullen whisper of a novel.
Review: Jeffrey Eugenides brings this quirky account of one boy's view of a tragic multi-suicide that occurred during his childhood. However, this book stands out against others because of the simple way it was written, with a middle-aged man recanting this tale as if he were still his old teenage self. Eugenides weaves together his whimsical prose to create this book which gives off a melancholy tone and urges the reader, ever so softly, to feel the same. As the story is told, you gradually put pieces together, much like the men do, recalling things about the girls, and interviewing all who might know even the slightest bit more than they do. The best angle of this story is the fact that just like the men (just large boys, really) you don't know much about the girls either, and are left to draw your own conclusions about what they were truly like, while falling in love with them a bit yourself. With the rush of giddy teenage infatuation that you'll feel during this novel, you'll no doubt want to pick up Eugenides other stories, which wrap around you in much the same way.
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