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Buy The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides available and for sale on Brightsurf
| View Larger Image | The Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
| | List Price: | $13.99 | | Price: | $11.19 | | You Save: | $2.80 (20%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 6089 | | Studio: | Grand Central Publishing | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 256 | | Publication Date: | June 01, 1994 | | Publisher: | Grand Central Publishing |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
This beautiful and sad first novel, recently adapted for a major motion picture, tells of a band of teenage sleuths who piece together the story of a twenty-year old family tragedy begun by the youngest daughter's spectacular demise by self-defenstration, which inaugurates 'the year of the suicides.' |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 392 reviews)
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this is a true story 
this is one of the saddest and truest stories I have ever read. I am so grateful to Jeffery Eugenides for telling this story of young teenage girls who choose suicide because in the end it is the one true thing that they can actually do--the one true communication that everyone "gets." Why is it so hard for the boys (the narrators) to hear the girls? Or for anyone in the novel to hear the girls? they are completely alone, not because they think of no one else or are selfish, but because there is no avenue of expression open to them; if everyone else in the novel would stop putting the girls under continual surveillance maybe they would have heard the girls, but it is hard to say for sure... to me, I see the novel really as a true representation of a period in our history and of young teenage women--at least how they appear. Someone will have to write the same novel from the girls' point of view....i found the novel heartbreaking and truly reminiscent.
July 18, 2008 | |
Unusual narrators, exaggerated concept, and intelligent storytelling make this readable & thought-provoking. Highly recommended
In American suburbia, the five Lisbon sisters, ages 12 through 17, commit suicide. The youngest goes first, and after their parents sequester the family within the house, her sisters follow a year afterward. Their story is told by a group neighborhood of boys, now men, who in their fanatic obsession with the Lisbon sister have pieced together the events leading up to--and possibly causing--the suicides. The unusual narrative voice is at once distant and invasively familiar, and paints a surreal image of familiar, ordinary teenage life twisted by stifling overcrowding and overprotection. The narrators never quite determine why the girls commit suicide, but this unanswered question opens up a world of thought for the reader. At pieces sweet and claustrophobic, humorous and unsettling, The Virgin Suicides is strangely engrossing and stands in a class of its own: a unusual novel that investigates without judgment. I highly recommend it.
The novel opens with the suicide of the last Lisbon daughter, and only after revealing the ending does it go back to the beginning and explore the journey through each of the five suicides. The narrators, now-grown neighbors of the sisters, speak across the distance of time and a suburban street. They've pieced their story together through memories, interviews, and mementos collected from the Lisbon house. Needless to say, The Virgin Suicides is an unusual novel from the onset, but these unusual aspects are all strengths. The uncommon first person plural of narrators, which stand at a distance even as they watch the sisters in the privacy of their joint bathroom, captures the reader from the onset, moving swiftly through the plot yet pausing for intimate detail that brings the characters (the sisters, their parents, and even the narrators) to life. It creates a surreal and almost haunting atmosphere which maintains a sense of mystery despite the blunt introduction of the suicides. The intriguing journey back to the suicide which open the text keeps the book interesting to the last page. As such, the novel's ingenious storytelling makes it hard to put down.
The text is swiftly readable but never disintegrates into a cheap thrill; instead, it is an intelligent, thoughtful book. The suicides are both hook and climax to the story, but the book itself is a journey to and between the suicides. There are a dozen possibilities, but neither the narrators nor the author ever pinpoint what drives Celia, Therese, Mary, Bonnie, and Lux to kill themselves. At some level, this unanswered question is frustrating and makes the end of the book almost teasingly brief. However, the cause of the suicides is essential--and yet somehow irrelevant. What matters is the Lisbon sisters: their life as fractioned representations of modern suburban adolescence, smothered under the protective care of their parents, left forever unfinished by their suicides. The Virgin Suicides is exploration without judgment, opening a world to the reader for him to think on it himself.
I'm was not sure what to expect when I first picked up this book. I was aware of its success and intrigued by the unusual concept, but wasn't quite sure how the latter could lead to the former. Now, having read it, I'm impressed by the connection: Eugenides writes an extreme scenario into the most mundane setting, and so by exaggerating reality he in fact explores it. The sisters are real personalities and also archetypes, images of adolescence which is constrained even as it begins to blossom. The Virgin Suicides is quite brilliant, haunting, readable, intelligent, and thought-provoking. I'm impressed, and glad I had to the chance to read it. I highly recommend this book.
June 06, 2008 | |
Brilliant start, lags a little in the middle 
The Virgin Suicides gets off to a morose but brilliant start and while its ending holds no real surprises, the tragic inevitably of the final chapters is poignant and disturbing. Where The Virgin Suicides falters is in the middle. Despite the relatively light page count, Eugenides' debut novel becomes monotonous to read after a while. But I think this was a conscious decision made by the author.
Between suicides, very little happens. Life in suburbia carries on while the Lisbon home falls into disrepair and the Libsons themselves fade from view. The greatest crime in Suburbia is the failure to maintain the façade. The Libson's neighbours initially feel sympathy for the family's plight, but over time, the Libson home becomes a blight on the neighbourhood. The Libson home is a microcosm of suburbia which in turn is a microcosm of America. Happiness and the American Dream are a thin veneer, a lie that we feel obliged to propagate. We ostracize those who fail to maintain the facade.
Eugenides may be making a literary point but the result is my interest in the novel (after such a strong start) began to wane. Still, this is a powerfully affecting and disturbing novel. Its premise (the suicides of five teenage sisters) and other elements of the novel (notably the self destructive promiscuity of 14 year old Lux) may be unsettling for some readers.
Despite its flaws, this is an insightful and original debut novel.
April 25, 2008 | |
Don't bother with this one -- read Middlesex instead. 
If you haven't read anything by Jeffrey Eugenides, skip the Virgin Suicides and head right to Middlesex. VS was slow paced and dull. The characters were merely charicatures -- shallow and unrelatable. By the end, I couldn't wait until all the girls were dead -- just to put this painfully boring story out of its misery.
Thank goodness I read Middlesex by Eugenides before I read this one. Middlesex was a very interesting story -- one of my recent favorites. If I had read VS first, I wouldn't have even bothered with Middlesex.
My recommendation -- skip The Virgin Suicides and head right to Middlesex. VS should be put to rest. It's going right into my Goodwill box -- not even worthy of passing to one of my many book-loving friends.
February 23, 2008 | |
Death in Suburbia
With "Suicides" (implying more than one) in the title, talented author Jeffrey Eugenides' debut "The Virgin Suicides" promises to be somewhat depressing, and it delivers. Plot becomes unimportant as the only mystery is just how many of the five daughters in a suburban Michigan family of the 1970s will kill themselves and how. Suicide number one by the youngest happens in somewhat spectacular fashion. The rest of the novel is given over to a third person description of how the family handles the tragedy as told by someone (an unnamed neighborhood teenage boy) who can only infer much of the action through closed drapes, rarely opened doors, and a collection of objects that is eerily archaeological--artifacts of a culture that has died right before his eyes.
All of this can be a bit confusing and a lot depressing to the reader, but I expect that such a reaction is exactly Eugenides' point--sharing the outsiders' view of what has to be an intensely personal tragedy for any family. Then again, perhaps the suicides and parallel ongoing extinction of elm trees by Dutch Elm disease are metaphors for the death of the American suburban soul.
For me, "The Virgin Suicides" was better in the analysis (four stars) than in the reading (three stars), during which it reminded me greatly of another depressing, but well-written tale of suburban life, Rick Moody's The Ice Storm: A Novel. I'll round up to four stars. Readers would be better served to start with Eugenides' amazing 2002 offering Middlesex: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club), a definite five-star book all the way.
February 16, 2008 | |
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