The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
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THE VIRGIN SUICIDES PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Jeffrey Eugenides | 260 pages | 20 Jun 2013 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9780007524303 | English | London, United Kingdom The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides Their mother Kathleen Turner is a hysteric so rattled by her daughters' blooming sexuality that she adds cloth to their prom dresses until they appear in "four identical sacks. These parents look gruesome to us. All parents look gruesome to kids, and all of their attempts at discipline seem unreasonable. The teenage years of the Lisbon girls are no better or worse than most teenage years. This is not the story of daughters driven to their deaths. The story it most reminds me of, indeed, is " Picnic at Hanging Rock " , about a party of young girls, not unlike the Lisbon sisters in appearance and sexual experience, who go for a school outing one day and disappear into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Were they captured? Killed in a fall? Trapped somehow? Bitten by snakes? Simply lost in the maze of nature? What happened to them is not the point. Their disappearance is the point. One moment they were smiling and bowing in their white dresses in the sun, and the next they were gone forever. The lack of any explanation is the whole point: For those left behind, they are preserved forever in the perfection they possessed when they were last seen. She has the courage to play it in a minor key. She doesn't hammer home ideas and interpretations. She is content with the air of mystery and loss that hangs in the air like bitter poignancy. Tolstoy said all happy families are the same. Yes, but he should have added, there are hardly any happy families. To live in a family group with walls around it is unnatural for a species that evolved in tribes and villages. What would work itself out in the give-and-take of a community gets grotesque when allowed to fester in the hothouse of a single-family home. A mild-mannered teacher and a strong-willed woman turn into a paralyzed captive and a harridan. Their daughters see themselves as captives of these parents, who hysterically project their own failure upon the children. The worship the girls receive from the neighborhood boys confuses them: If they are perfect, why are they seen as such flawed and dangerous creatures? And then the reality of sex, too young, peels back the innocent idealism and reveals its secret engine, which is animal and brutal, lustful and contemptuous. In a way, the Lisbon girls and the neighborhood boys never existed, except in their own adolescent imaginations. They were imaginary creatures, waiting for the dream to end through death or adulthood. We see her talking to a psychiatrist after she tries to slash her wrists. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Kathleen Turner as Mrs. James Woods as Mr. Kirsten Dunst as Lux Lisbon. The thing I liked the most about this book is the perspective. We're learning about 5 girls who commit suicide.. It was genius. The way this book was written is brilliant. Honestly, every couple of pages I would think to myself "When I don't even really know what to say. Honestly, every couple of pages I would think to myself "When Jeffrey Eugenides thought to himself that he should write this from the outside view he had one of the best epiphanies ever. This book is just so true, so pure. It isn't false in anyway, it states it how it is: sad and depressing and demoralizing and harsh and upsetting. But true. Why didn't I love this book? I don't know. I honestly, I don't know. There was something missing. Maybe it was my disconnect from the story, maybe it was my lack of real care for any of the events or characters, or maybe it was the lack of plot. When I'm true to myself, I could act like this was the best book, I could write and essay about how life altering this book is, but it's a lie. Maybe for other people it is that, but for me it wasn't. Sometimes, you just don't connect to a book, and I didn't. Jun 04, Fabian rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Depressed people who complain about apathetic parents. Wow, you knew that this guy was the real deal after all. I see this as a perfect segue to his masterpiece "Middlesex". It's simple, it's sad, it is capital I Intriguing. The first novel always announces the author's intentions for those that come next, and Eugenides loves the themes of adolescence in all its tragic shortcomings. The Lisbon girls are monoliths to the nameless suitors who do nothing else but speculate about them and become passionate voyeurs. They do nothing to save them; they only Wow, you knew that this guy was the real deal after all. They do nothing to save them; they only observe and obsess. I guess while girls become emblematic of sexual repression, the foolish boys become symbols of generic apathy and cowardice. It's a symbol of the times; a portrait of true suburban un-happiness. View 1 comment. Mar 12, K. Shelves: core. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Since the story is about 5 teenage sisters and the narrators were interested on them, readers presumed that they were narrating from the viewpoint of schoolboys with raging hormones and think of sex almost every hour of the day. Until the last sentence when Eugenides revealed that the narrators are already middle-age men with thinning hair and soft bellies. My perception of the story as a reader made a complete turnaround. The collective voice of the narrators who are voyeurs of the Lisbon family oozes with innocence of being young and sexually curious and guilt of being voyeurs who did not do anything to save the sisters. If you read this novel in a superficial manner, this is just about 5 young sisters year-old Cecilia , year-old Lux , year-old Bonnie , year-old Mary , and year-old Therese who killed themselves because of their very strict mother and workaholic submissive effeminate father. They probably lost all hopes of having a good future like finishing school after they were pulled out just because Lux missed the curfew or finding a rich man to marry since they were not allowed to go out anymore. But Eugenides, having an M. It would have been too simple for a story to be all about that. The boys thought that they were innocent but the fact that they were watching the Lisbon house through their binoculars, they were communicating with them via songs played on the telephone, the girls were leaving notes posted on the bicycle wheels or in the mailboxes did not give them the inkling to help to prevent the eventual group suicides. They just watched and did nothing. In effect, the boys were the selfish ones and the guilt that permeates in them in their middle-age is what Eugenides, in my opinion, wants to communicate with this novel. Forewarned the people of small town of GrossPointe, Michigan. Some paid attention: the priest, the social worker. But in the end those were just not enough. The Lisbon sisters committed suicide with the blood left on the hands of the boys and the whole town. And the creepiest thing there is that since Eugenides used "we" and "us" and realizing in the end that those narrators were not teenage kids but were middle-age men, gave me the feeling that I, now a middle-age man myself, was with them watching Lux making out with faceless boys and men on the rooftop making me equally guilty. For me, this is a sample of a novel that seems to be a simple story but very rich in terms of interpretation. It just made me think of my role as a father to my teenage daughter. How I should deal with her especially during those times when we misunderstand each other, she locks herself in her room and cry. Fatherhood is trial and error and they say that one has to only follow his heart and everything will turn out right in the end. I wish it is that simple. Not that our family has the suicidal gene running in our blood but I just have to more sensitive and not bury myself in my office work and books and hope that times like that will go away once she's 20 and no longer an adolescent. One hell of a writer. View all 54 comments. Nov 17, F rated it did not like it Shelves: seen-movie , , usa. So disappointed with this book. Couldnt get my head round the characters. Apr 10, Charlotte May rated it liked it Shelves: classics , sisters , contemporary-recent. I finally ordered it from the library and gave it a go. It was ok. Rather odd at times, and not the most riveting of reads, but ok nonetheless. Set around the s I think? The sisters live in a claustrophobic household, full of strict rules laid down by their mother. Within the space of 2 years all 5 girls are dead - by suicide. Told from the perspective of 4 teen 3. Told from the perspective of 4 teenage boys who become infatuated with the girls, they follow their lives, and take them on the only date the girls will ever go on.