The Virgin Suicides

Rating:
Summary: The Wonder Years
Review: Ostensibly, "The Virgin Suicides" is a compendium of the "evidence" offered to explain the suicides of five siblings, the Lisbon sisters, in an affluent Detroit suburb in the 1970s. The "evidence" is presented by a collective narrator, an anonymous "we," who seems mostly a white middle class teenage boy.

Though--as my own inadequate attempt suggests--it is difficult to offer a compelling summary of Jeffrey Eugenides' first novel, the book is very good. Eugenides writes very well and his sense of humor is both intelligent and unpretentious. Eugenides' evocation of suburban adolesent life in general and of suburban adolescent sexuality in particular is highly authentic--perhaps autobiographically so.

The "investigation" premise keeps the novel moving along nicely, but if you read the novel only with a view to discovering why the Lisbon sisters killed themselves, you will be greatly disappointed. What one comes to realize is that the novel is as much about the anonymous narrator "we,"--composed of teeneagers as indistinguishable as the the Lisbon sisters themselves (as all teenagers are, their nonconformist aspirations notwithstanding)--as it is about the lives and deaths of the five girls.

Rating:
Summary: Pure poetry
Review: What beautiful, poetic and simple prose. His writing is both simple and complex. As I was reading the book I kept wondering whether this was about teenage suburban boys coming of age or whether it was about five sisters who ended their lives before maturation. The two themes seemed ironically at odds. His clean, flowing writing style immediately captures the reader, while depth of his words draws the reader deeper into the story.
I was most impressed with his ability to capture the emotions and obsessions of the boys.
But what I found difficult was trying to distinguish each of the Lisbon girls. I kept having to refer back to the beginning of the book and the back cover to figure out which girl was which. Lux was the most obvious because of her flamboyant character and Cecelia because of her immediate suicide, but none of the other sisters seemed to have much of a personality of their own.
Nevertheless, Eugenides has done a masterful job of weaving a story filled with emotion and has truly delivered it in a way that draws the reader in immediately.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting and compelling...
Review: Wow. What a fabulous, page-turning, fascinating book! It's been two years since I saw the movie, but from what I can remember, the movie doesn't do this book justice. Maybe it is the unique style of the narrative that made me love it so, or the sweet obsession of the narrators...I don't know what exactly, but The Virgin Suicides was simply wonderful despite the morbid subject.

Set in 1970s suburbia, The Virgin Suicides tells the story of the Lisbon family from the point of view of a group of boys living in the same neighborhood. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon are both sort of boring and normal, but their five daughters, Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux and Cecilia are exotic and mysterious...so different from their parents, it's hard to imagine how it happened. The story opens with the suicide of Mary, the last in the "year of the suicides" of the five sisters. From there, the story starts at the beginning as seen through the eyes of the neighborhood boys and is compiled through heresay, interviews, diary entries, personal contact, and their avid spying. What is so unique about this story is since it is told from an outside perspective, the answers to many questions remain unanswered, only assumed.

The Virgin Suicides takes readers through a year in the life of the Lisbon sisters, their untimely demise, the speculations of the neighborhood, as well as the unraveling of the Lisbon family. A tender, lively story with the ending already known, but fascinating to see how it gets there. I was impressed over and over and highly recommend this profound, moving novel.

Rating:
Summary: Bleakly humorous, deeply touching
Review: This is one of the most outstanding debuts I have personally ever read. Eugenides narrates the story of the suicide of the Lison girls through the eyes of the boys who were obsessed by them. As far as story goes that's roughly it, but the themes of innocence, teenage despair and the incomprehensibility of suicide. It goes further than any other novel in its portrayal of adolescense.

First of all the narrative is impressive due to it describing the Lisbon girls purely from an outside perspective; Eugenides doesn't explicitely explain their suicides because his narrators don't know precisely either. The book is a kind of a unique and intriguing jigsaw puzzle made up from interviews and hazy recollections, yet still manages to maintain a linear narrative. Although bleak though, it's not depressing and never lowers itself to sentimentality. The ending contains a kind of desperation not only to understand the Lisbon girls but also to understand suicide in general and the pains of adolescense. It cleverly manages the desire to gaze back at the past with rose-tinted glasses with the actual truth and is so beautifully put together that it's difficult to get a handle on what is so compelling about it.

There's also a nice bit of humour, especially in the etching out of the inquisitive neighbourhood that surrounds the Lisbon girls, each giving their own often ridiculous reasons for the suicides. Finally the book presents a view of adolescense that is at once beautiful and oppressive, with some fantastic characterisation. As a sidenote, the movie is just as good as the book, something of a rarity in any case. This novel should come highly recommended to anyone who's ever experienced a painful adolescense, or lost faith in dreams of a perfect adulthood.

Rating:
Summary: ~The Virgin Suicides~
Review: The Virgin Suicides is a really good book, I would recommend it to anyone. The Virgin Suicides explains in great detail how a person feels being the one who has survived a suicide, as well as the way the other person felt before committing suicide.
This is a really good book, it really makes you feel like you're there. And there are five sisters so I'm sure everyone can relate to feeling the way at least one of the girls did. Lux was my favorite, she was the one who found the least creative way to hide her pain.
Basically the five Lisbon girls lived in a small town with their parents. Their mother was very over-protective of them and wouldn't let them have any freedom. The girls didn't get any freedom at school either, because their dad is a teacher at their school. -- After the youngest sister commits suicide the family sort of falls apart. The girls' over-protective mother takes them out of school and day after day they sit in the house. Eventually, it just eats away at the girls' until they all commit suicide. (On the anniversary of the first sisters attempt to commit suicide by slitting her wrist.)
The Virgin Suicides is a really interesting book. I really enjoyed this book, it is worth the money and the time to read it. Once you start reading it you won't want to put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Extremly Real
Review: This was a book that I bought for a vacation trip, turns out though that that was a bad choice because once I started reading it, I got so involved in their lives that I couldn't stop reading it! I highly recommend that others buy this book because it is one that is definitly worth the time and money.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful writing...
Review: I for one read the book, then immediately watched the movie, hoping to gain some kind of understanding into the ending. Of course, don't do this. Because the movie itself mirrors the book exactly, untila few short things at the end.

The book is written wonderfully, and you find yourself completely enveloped in the beginning and middle, but kind of getting bored at the end... especially when the ending leaves you thinking "huh?"

I recommend this as a book to read... But it's not on my top ten list. And the movie doesn't help matters any.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, not great
Review: Probably my biggest issue with this book, is that I saw the movie first. The movie mirrors the book quite closesly, and it bothered me that sophie coppolla was actually given screenwriting credits. Regardless, I wanted to read this book, to gain more understanding of the characters, the development was not what I would have hoped for. You never really gain any new understanding from the book that was not in the movie.

Rating:
Summary: read it
Review: I recommend every parent to read this book, especially parents with teenagers. I am a teenager, and yes I do read, so I'm telling all parents to go read this now.

Rating:
Summary: A Lyrical Debut Novel
Review: One thing I noticed first was Eugenides' prose. It's simple and unadorned, but has a beautifully measured quality about it. So no matter how gruesome subject matter of the novel gets, since the descriptions are so poetically filtered, nothing feels sensationalized or gratuitous.

The story is about the Lisbon daughters who all commit suicide and the fascination of a group of boys (who are now balding, middle aged men) regarding the girls and their circumstances. It is one of the more astutely observed books about adolescent girlhood and the mystique that surrounds it.

I have a reservation about how Eugenides uses the first person plural narration. It does have its lyrical charms - sometimes it sounds as though the narrator is a pseudo-Greek chorus. But when Eugenides specifically locates the members of the 'we' narrator, problems arise. It shifts the attention of the reader to the specific nature of the narrators' identities, and somehow the narration doesn't seem realistic or plausible. The narrators still continue to be haunted (as a group no less) regarding the girls' suicides and interview the people who knew the girls. This obsession doesn't seem realistic at all, especially when it's made apparent by Eugenides that the narrators are unremarkable, ordinary middle-aged men. Why are these plain, ordinary men still haunted by this event, and are irreversibly affected by it? The psychological motivation of the narrators' actions seems false.

Still, Eugenides captures the suburban life of a town, and the mystery of the Lisbon girls with a heartbreaking poignancy. The writing is consistently beautiful, and there's wonderful, spontaneous humor that flashes throughout the book, even at the darkest turns. A great, promising debut.