Product Description
In the tradition of Bright Lights, Big City and The Secret History comes a compelling, highly-acclaimed debut novel of youth and innocence. On the elm-lined streets of a middle-class American city, the lives of a group of teenaged boys are forever changed by their obsession with five mysteriously doomed sisters.
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 i can relate to this book! ( c_baez )
raised in the pentecostal church, i can relate with a lot of the girls' experience. As a matter of fact, I went as far as thinking about suicide, because I felt as if I couldn't be part of anything fun in life. Going to school was difficult since I was not allowed to do many of the activities normal teenagers did. It went as far as turning in a note from my pastor to the PE teacher stating that I was not allowed to participate in PE because the bible does not allow females to wear pants! So, throught all the years in school I sat on the bleeches watching other kids playing games and exercising. After I moved out of my parent's house I abandoned the relegion and have been attending a non-denominational church. Also, I have two teenage kids that I encourage to participate in sports, dances, and regular activities teenagers do.
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 Slow story doesn't really go anywhere ( santhonyatwindstreamdotnet )
Like many, I purchased this novel after having read the author's magnificent book, Middlesex. I had also seen the movie, starring Kirsten Dunst, which I recall enjoying quite a bit. Whether in comparison with Middlesex, or the film version, I found the novel lacking.
Perhaps being familiar with the story resulted in a lack of suspense, though there can't really be much suspense when the author reveals the ultimate end game early in the novel. The writing was quite good, though I felt that the story dragged significantly for a good majority of the book.
Bottom line, there's really not much story there. The flowery and descriptive prose can only cover for a slow moving plot for only so long before it quite simply becomes boring. I reached that point at about page 100.
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Honestly!
When the doctor treats Cecilia Lisbon's slit wrists, he asks why in the world she would want to kill herself?
"Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl," Cecilia replies.
Cecilia should have read >Huckleberry Finn< by Mark Twain. Huck had to dress up like a thirteen-year-old girl, and would understand her plight. Huck had also seen a drawing by fifteen-year-old Emmeline Grangerford, who pictured herself dressed in a white gown, poised to leap to her death from a bridge. Emmeline had done another drawing, "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup Again, Alas!" of a dead bird.
"I didn't somehow seem to take to them," Huck said reluctantly about her pictures. He was on the lam with a runaway slave at the time, living hand-to-mouth, so Emmeline's obsession with death and sadness was hard for him to comprehend.
In the final chapter of >The Virgin Suicides<, the author Eugenides explains, "In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws."
Rudolf Rolfs' satirical German poem "Der Backfisch" also expresses angst about the "flaws:"
"I would like to despair of the whole world!
"I would like to be banished from my own home!
"I would like to throw myself in front of a car!
"But I only saw these things in a movie."
The best that can be said for >The Virgin Suicides< is that it works as a piece of browbeating exploitation-literature. Literature is after all the same as movies; it's only commerce.
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 Jorie's Reads on The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Virgin Suicides
* 1001 Books Book
Eugenides, J. (1994). The virgin suicides. New York: Warner Books.
Thanks to Oprah, I read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides this past summer. Amazed by Eugenides, I looked to see when the movie would be coming. Well, that has not happened yet for Middlesex but there was Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, a movie adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides' first novel by the same name. Quickly, I put my name on the waiting list for the movie. After I saw the movie, I requested the book. Both The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex are among the 1001 Books of 2006. Now, I even own a copy of The Virgin Suicides.
Narrated by a group of middle-aged men looking upon items and memories, The Virgin Suicides takes the reader through that fateful "year of the suicides." These guys were the teenage neighbors of the Catholic Lisbon family. Mr. Lisbon teaches high school math while the strict Mrs. Lisbon makes a home for her five lovely daughters. They are the "brainy Therese (17), fastidious Mary (16), ascetic Bonnie (15), libertine Lux (14), and pale, saintly Cecilia (13)," (Eugenides).
Cecilia attempts suicide and seemingly stuns all, including her older sisters. In order to cheer the glum Cecilia, the Lisbons throw a party in their basement. Cecilia excuses herself and jumps from her bedroom window, successfully taking her own life. Becoming the talk of the Grosse Pointe community, the remaining Lisbon girls grow more isolated from other kids and the grist for the rumor mill.
Again, Eugenides impressed and held me spellbound by his writing. I found myself wishing that Eugenides, not King, had written Carrie. The seamless movement of his group of narrators through interviews and attempts of understanding what has come to pass in neighborhood would have smoothed the multitude of wrinkles in Carrie. I wish my high school group projects/papers had gone so well!
Eugenides captures the dementia of obsession and elusiveness of crushes with painful poignancy. In their telling of the Lisbon girls, these guys have beautified these sisters, particularly the dazzling Lux. Memory and aura protect these girls from the scrutiny attempted by the quixotic group of men. They are still haunted by the Lisbons.
Allegorical or not, I was enthralled by the descriptions and views of the Lisbon girls. Due to rubber necking and disbelief, I could not stop reading this book. In their endeavor to solve the mystery, I learned much about the narrator. Coming away from my reading, I felt I knew much more about the telescope than the stars. Of course, people tend to tell on themselves. This is how life goes.
I give The Virgin Suicides Four and Three quarters Pearls.
For more book reviews by Jorie, go to http://JoriesReads.Wordpress.Com
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Time in a Bottle
"... they were bound for college, husbands, child-rearing, unhappiness only dimly perceived -- bound, in other words, for life."
The Virgin Suicides is not just a story of the loneliness of being female. It is also a story of the loneliness of life and understanding what it is to be female; the pressures, or rather, the facade of traditional values placed upon women, lead to the Lisbon sisters demise.
What makes The Virgin Suicides so compelling is the fact that it is told from the male persepctive. And, from a time, the 70's, where everyone blamed changing moraks and godlessness for the troubles with youth. This brilliant novel serves as an allegory to life. In the process of protecting our youth, or by following traditions that never truly exsisted, we cause unhappiness larger and darker than death itself.
The Virgin Suicides is a darkly comic, deeply moving novel. The ending will gnaw at your stomach. The complacency, the indifference of the world, will truly astonish. It transcends time in a mythical way, and will leave an ominous mark upon your life. Pure genius.
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