a very haunting little twisted love story. The boys love girls they try desperately to have....

The book and movie are so different but the general theme is the same. ( )

Wow! Bizarre and Haunting are the words that come to mind on finishing The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides .
The story is set in 1970s Suburbia. The Virgin Suicides tells the story of the Lisbon family. Told through the eyes of the neighbourhood boys who are obsessed with the five teenage sisters and they relate to the reader the tragic events that lead up the the suicides of the 5 Lisbon Girls.
I have been pondering how how to write this review for the past 24 hours as I had so many feelings while and after reading this novel. When I started reading this story I was intrigued by the Lisbon family and found it difficult to put this book down, my feelings then turned to frustration as I wanted to get to know the characters as individuals and found myself looking for information that was not there. I wanted so much more from this novel and perceived early on that author was just not going to give it to to me the easy way. I found the writing and prose excellent and really made this novel a pleasure to read.

I learned half ways through the novel that this book was about so much more than answers and found myself easily adapting to weirdness of the tale. I enjoyed the pace of the story and loved how the story was narrated in the first person plural by the neighbourhood boys and this is what made the novel so compelling for me.

I would love to have read this book as a book club read as it is the sort of book that would make excellent discussion. I think only in a group discussion would I finally find the answers I am looking for!

Would I recommend this novel to all of my friends. No! as this is one of those books that I think you should decide for yourself if you want to read. I will say it is not a depressing book but it is Bizarre and haunting. ( )

“Obviously, Doctor… you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”

The Virgin Suicides is about the Lisbon sisters, who all take their lives over the course of one year. The novel is written in first-person plural from the perspective of an anonymous group of teenage boys who struggle to find an explanation for the Lisbons' deaths.

Set in Michigan during the 1970s, this book sheds light on mental illness in an age where not much was known. This is conveyed through the numerous theories doctors came up with to explain the suicides. One of these is the concept of catching suicidal thoughts like some kind of virus.

It also explores the impact of suicide on a community. I don’t think I’d recommend this book to a teenage girl as I think the author with his descriptive language romanticize suicide. I know the teenage version of me wouldn’t have seen the bigger picture of what the story is about. I would’ve focused on the dreamy images that Jeffrey Eugenides details. ( )

This book had two states to me.

State 1: ramblings that seemed kind of irrelevant and added nothing but boredom to my reading experience.

State 2: a brilliant portrayal of the male gaze through the eyes of anonymous unreliable narrators.

The parts that were good were brilliant, but in an uncomfortable way. Some of the ways the girls were described made me squirm a bit. Certain parts resonated deeply, and I'll probably be thinking about them for a long time.

But the most interesting part is how the story barely even feels about what the girls do. They're the main event, yet we hardly know anything about them. The entire book is what OTHER people on the outside think about them. It leads to a lot of the narration feeling pointless, but is also why the bits that work are genius. ( )

My only negative experience with this book was the many references to their bodies as if it really mattered (especially since the narrators seem to be grown men with wives recalling the body of a teenage girl), and what really made me laugh was how a vagina was described as a beast with fur and “otter insulation”. It didn’t ruin the story, but it lingered in my head even when watching the movie. But I know this infatuation is purposeful. It’s kind of the whole point. Besides that, I truly loved this.


some of my favorite quotes (probably everyone else’s too, I’m not very original):

“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together.”

“if we were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that it is always that pale wraith we make love to, always her feet snagged in the gutter, always her single blooming hand steadying itself against the chimney, no matter what our present lovers’ feet and hands are doing.”

“It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time”
( )

Reads a lot like an overly intense and dramatized documentary, but still interesting and very well written. At times it seemed hard to empathize with the entire situation since the parents and the girls were all such insane/inexplicable people. Even if this was the goal that was emphasized by the perspective the book took, it was slightly frustrating... ( )

Most of my theories on the world change every few years. New evidence, new voices in the mix, new ways of thinking tend to do that to a person. But my theory that every book written in the third-person plural is a masterpiece was formed when I read The Virgin Suicides back in my now-distant teens, and it remains unchallenged. ( )

I don't know what to rate this book. Well-written? Yes. But on a personal level, it was disturbing and I probably shouldn't have pushed myself. I've picked it up and put it down many times before; once I got a dozen pages in, I said "Well, I never want to read this again, so I'm going to finish it." I believe I only made it by keeping it at (emotional) arm's length, so I certainly didn't give it a proper reading.

...Reading books is not only about the way the book is written; it also has to be (more than I usually factor in?) about the reader. Maybe.

At least I can put this one behind me now. It actually did make me want to reread Middlesex.

Edit Nov 2017: Fuck not rating books. I hated this. It's literally written from the POV of the male gaze, and it still makes my skin crawl when I think about it. ( )

The ending was really inadequate. A very complex and compelling story with a cop out ending ( )

The prose in this novel is arresting; the story uncomfortable in so many ways; the symbolism well-placed; and the point of view fresh. The Virgin Suicides unfolds from a first-person plural viewpoint: a group of men collectively recalling the incidents that occurred in their upper middle class Detroit suburb during their teenage years, and against which they continued to measure experiences later in life. It is less a story about the suicides themselves and more about the boys’ adolescent fantasies that seemed to carry with them late into adulthood, still obsessed with what occurred in the period of a less than two years. The teenage boys here seem to have fallen under the spell of the Lisbon girls, who are not allowed to date and kept under the strict scrutiny of their parents. While the backdrop is the girls’ suicides over the course of a little more than a year, the real story is about teenage male desire, fantasizing, mythologizing, and objectifying the girls. ( )

Just could not get into it. I can see why other people like it: good writing, subversive, family dramas in all there weirdness and unknowability…. But it left me cold. Didn’t finish, but I read the last couple of pages to confirm that my reasons for not finishing were sound. Nothing more was going to be gleaned by me than what I had already gleaned. DNF

This is a profoundly depressing book. First, it’s about the sad and useless suicides of a family of daughters, abused and crushed by their mother’s behaviour. At the end the author has a minor rant about how they had taken on something that should have been left for god- a comment that seems wrong after the endless descriptions of the girls’ hopeless lives. Surely if god were about, someone would have stepped in and stopped this from happening.

The second reason it is depressing is because the writing is just so darn good. Occasionally, I tired of the lengthy descriptions of minor characters or scenes, but over all, the prose sings with a competence I so wish I had.

I didn’t like the book, but I may have to reread it just to see how he did it, how he put me in that town, with those people, so quickly and deeply.

That said, there are some places where his being a man writing about womanly things runs away with itself. I can’t imagine boys wanting to collect women’s tampons (used), and in one place the author compares the sadness of this family and town to investigating one’s testicles- sorry, not the same. At times the writing gets too precious, too fond of its voice. Are young boys really this obsessive?

Maybe they are. For me, it’s a grim grim tale that somehow misses making the reader feel involved- we are observers, just as the town is, and I’m left with a distant colouring of guilt, as if I could have helped the girls, but chose to watch them pruriently instead.

Must go wash my hands. ( )

I never quite got into this. It provides an interesting picture of a place at a particular time, but the characters and events never reeled me in. I might have overinflated my expectations because of how much I loved Middlesex.

Update: this comment really resonates: http://www.metafilter.com/156948/one-weird-trick-that-makes-a-novel-addictive#63... ( )

Eugenides in one of my favorite authors and I have rated all his other books very highly. I have never read this because I saw the movie, but I felt I should read all the books of an author that I really enjoy. This book which was highly rated by many did not work for me. The writing was excellent and it did contain some excellent humor but somehow its' almost fable like style seemed to trivialize the real tragedy of the girls' suicides(not a spoiler because that comes up immediately). Perhaps there is some symbolizing etc. that I missed but for. me this book did not merit more than 2.5 stars and that was based on the quality of the writing and interesting and ofter funny descriptions of the many characters in the book. It you want a great Eugenides book than read "Middlesex" which is a classic. ( )

Loved this book. It still lingers in my head. ( )

While I can appreciate this on some level because of the perspective and nod to the way society treats women and communities, there was too much I didn't like about it. For example, the same undertones of criticism on society are overshadowed by having a bunch of boys having a fetish and not being able to let the Lisbon girls go even as they got older because of their beauty in misery. I get that it's an unreliable narrator because we never really know why someone decides to leave the world on their terms. From a personal perspective, you are left with many questions and sadness as the person who loses someone. But as a female reading it, I just felt gross. I understand having pressure at such a young age, especially today is bringing mental health conversations to the forefront because it is tragic when teenagers and younger don't see a way out. That may have been where the intention for this book lay. But it missed the mark. We need books and media that are open, honest, and genuinely looking to help people struggling to see a better way. We don't need fetishization or sexualization. ( )

Now that I've decided to try to 'review' each book that I have cataloged, there will be books( like this one) where I may recall reading it some years ago, may or may not remember how or why I liked it, but still can recall only a few or maybe no details about the experience. ( )

E infine comprendemmo che le ragazze erano proprio donne camuffate, che capivano l’amore e anche la morte, e che il nostro compito consisteva semplicemente nel creare il rumore che sembrava capace di affascinarle.
(40)

La signora Beards citò un verso di Walt Whitman, e noi prendemmo l’abitudine di mormorarcelo a vicenda: “Avanti e fuori è il moto delle cose, nulla va perduto / e la morte non è ciò che credevamo, ma una fortuna più grande”.
(44)

Gli oggetti domestici perdevano il loro significato. La sveglia del comodino diventava un mucchietto di plastica sagomata e segnava qualcosa che si chiamava tempo in un mondo che ne registrava lo scorrere per chissà quale motivo.
(142)

Il nostro compito sarebbe quello di scovare, in questo luogo dai confini malcerti, in mezzo a grumi e matasse fisiologici, eventuali invasori sbucati dal nulla. Non ci siamo mai accorti di avere tanti bozzi finché non siamo andati a cercarli. E così, stesi sulla schiena, sondiamo quello spazio, indietreggiamo, ci riproviamo, e i semi della morte si perdono in quel guazzabuglio, perché Dio ci ha fatti così.
(153)

Certo, di tanto in tanto, mentre ci lasciavamo trasportare lentamente nel residuo malinconico del tempo che ci resta da vivere (là dove le sorelle Lisbon non hanno voluto posare gli occhi, scelta che cominciò a sembrare saggia) ci fermavamo, perlopiù da soli, per levare lo sguardo sul sepolcro imbiancato che una volta era la loro casa.
(220) ( )

The Virgin Suicides is one of those critically-acclaimed books that, after you read it, you stand back and say “Huh?” And then start beating yourself up for not being intellectual enough or perceptive enough to winkle out the deep and profound meaning, the extended metaphors, and the classical allegory of the novel.

Either that, or the emperor has no clothes.

Eugenides’ debut novel, apparently set in the 70s (as determined by the pop songs and teen fashions being referenced), traces the story of five sisters in one family who all kill themselves over a one-year period of time. That’s not a spoiler, as it's referenced fairly early on while the novel’s structure is being set up. The story is told in flashback from the viewpoint of several young men (their exact number and specific identities are never clarified) who were hormone-laden contemporaries of the Lisbon sisters and lusted for them in various ways during the last year of their lives.

One could, I suppose, expound upon the fact that the interior lives and ultimate motivations of the girls are never shown from the girls’ viewpoints. Perhaps this is intended to reflect the notion that women exist only to reflect the ideas of men, or that adolescents are routinely destroyed by the expectations of the adult world. Or maybe that modern families have become so insular that a community no longer sees, or is expected to step in (so much for “it takes a village”) when one nuclear family begins to implode.

One could pretend that the metaphor of the gradual disintegration of the Lisbon home is a brilliant and original way to represent the disintegration of the family and their intertwined manifestations of obsession and madness, except that it’s neither brilliant nor original. Most of the metaphors, in fact – the brief lifespan of the fish-flies whose annual cycle of emergence and death bracket the year-long span of the story, the slow dying of the stately elm trees whose beauty and dignity enhanced the neighborhood – are labored and obvious.

Or one could simply throw up one’s hands and move on to a more satisfying read, where characters develop, interact, and advance the basic plot as they reveal themselves and their relationships. Because one will find none of those qualities in this book. ( )

Quite odd. I think its oddness is passed over because it is so good and because of the existence of the movie. I guess I don't really understand it. Both entertaining and disturbing. ( )

Over the span of a year in the early 1970s, the five teenage Lisbon sisters commit suicide, leaving an indelible scar on the close-knit Michigan community where they live. Twenty years later, the unnamed narrator, one of a group of young men besotted with the Lisbons, tries to give an account of those tragic events. His intention is to present an objective report, complete with “exhibits” and testimonies. The prose, however, is anything but detached or scientific – it often burns with a febrile, poetic intensity. The very normal suburban setting becomes the backdrop for a surreal tale which veers from gothic tragedy to dark comedy and back again. These incongruities invite an allegorical reading – the Lisbons as metaphors for the boys’ coming of age and sexual awakening, the novel itself as an unbearably nostagic elegy for a past which seems just beyond reach and yet will never come back. ( )

I loved loved this movie, but I didn’t finish the book. It just seemed so uncomfortably voyeuristic and male-oriented. Didn’t enjoy. ( )

slow and frustrating; not worth the 50 cents I paid for it. ( )

"We gathered their possessions once more, everything we’d gotten hold of during our strange curatorship: Cecilia’s high-tops; Therese’s microscope; a jewelry box in which a strand of Mary’s dishwater-blond hair lay bedded on cotton; the photocopy of Cecilia’s laminated picture of the Virgin; one of Lux’s tube tops."

An investigation into the possibility of martyrdom in the American suburbs of the mid 20th century - complete with precious relics, and inviting a lifetime of devotional study - though a bit too licentious for my taste. Curiously, the saintly acts here are an inversion of a caricature of the Catholic faith: “The Acts of the Saints, Acta Sanctorum, as the cheap tricks of modern cinema." Here instead the quotidian is the domain of miracles, as if Elijah were in the living room impassively watching television

But why so many girls? The multiplicity of those characters suggests the kafka-esque figure of three borders joined together at the beard. One might respond “first as tragedy, then as farce, [finally as revelation],” Though, if true, Eugenides does a disservice by making the completion of the acts seem inevitable. The investigations in chapter 4 and beyond, and the increasing decrepitude of the girls' circumstances are flawed aspects of the work. This kind of martyrdom consists in an act without a visible sign. ( )

Una narración muy fluida que la verdad me atrapó desde la primera página. Me encantó la forma en como se desarrolló la historia de la chicas y la inminente conclusión que te dicen desde el primer momento.
Lo único que no me gusta de Eugenides es que a veces se sumerge mucho en historias de personajes secundarios, los cuales no tiene nada de malo, pero se vuelve demasiado densa cosa que entorpece el hilo de la historia. Lo bueno es que estos lapsus con en situaciones puntuales y no abarca capítulos completos. ( )