Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

31 reviews

miraveta's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Interesting to read a story where the narrators are so blatantly wrong about what's actually going on. They've placed themselves near the heart of a narrative they built up that in reality has little to do with them or anything larger than life, but rather the various everyday social pressures of the panopticon that is WASP suburban life.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Pedophilia and Sexual harassment

brianna2811's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Confinement, and Alcohol

Minor: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Medical content, Dementia, and Stalking

caseyreadslol's review against another edition

dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

And people say Holden Caulfield is a grating narrator... 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Child death, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

jeremie's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Suicide, Stalking, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Medical content

Minor: Pedophilia

kgrace_s's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, and Stalking

ptitirodactyle's review

dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Misogyny, Self harm, Suicide, Grief, Stalking, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Sexual content

Minor: Drug use, Pedophilia, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Alcohol

sofipitch's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Ode to the manic pixie dream girl. A lot of the book focused on how seeing the girls as such, coveted only for their sexual appeal, made them not real, and you can't help but wonder if not being seen as themselves but some idealized made up girl is what drove them to suicide. But they can never be known since they don't have a voice. Yet I took a peak at the tag for this book on Tumblr and saw a ton of people idealizing the girl's situation, wanting to be more of a figment of the imagination than a real person which was somehow equally devestating. Is it better to be idealized than not seen at all?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Pedophilia

phillyhufflepunk's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I cried...but not from sadness. I cried in frustration. This is one of the starkest tragedies ever written, told from the perspective of selfish, inane narrators - under the delusion that they are somehow a part of the story. With each new development, they...and the self-involved upper middle class d bags that they spawned from...fail the Lisbon girls. Over and over and over, the community has opportunity to step in, but they don't. As these boys chronicle the downward spiral of their Manic Pixie Dream Girls, they continuously miss the moments in which they actually could have saved them.

The boys literally run out of the house after finding one of the girls dead without checking on any of the others, in spite of the fact that they were there to save them in the first place AND that they were about to let Lux do one or all of them just 10 minutes earlier.

 The Lisbon Girls deserved better, and although the story would have been 10x better from their perspectives, I still rate it 4 stars because by hearing the story from a bunch of clueless middle aged men, who were clueless teenaged boys, you see just how ignored these girls felt when they were practically SCREAMING for help.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

sepulchral's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Eating disorder, Pedophilia, and Grief

Minor: Racial slurs

grboph's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

It took me a while to get into this book, but I'm glad I read it. I gave it four stars because it was beautifully written and the story was very emotionally charged (I found myself wanting to save the Lisbon sisters and felt for both their struggle and the boys'). I also think the book had some very profound things to say about repression, mental illness, and suicide that I appreciated as someone who has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts and lost a loved one to suicide. This is a book I can see myself re-reading at some point in the future and gaining something completely new out of it the second time around. However, I took a star off because the whole thing felt really male-gazey (both in the way the boys view the sisters and in the way Eugenides writes about them) and a lot of the pages felt like I might see photos of them on r/menwritingwomen. Because of this, it made the Lisbon sisters as characters seem a bit flat. I would really like to see a rewrite of the story done from the perspectives of the sisters since I feel this would make the story much deeper and more meaningful, as we would get to experience their feelings and the motivations that led to their deaths. (On the other hand, maybe the point of the story was that it was told from an outsider's perspective to focus on how the suicides affected both the people and the society surrounding them). In conclusion, this was a very good, although slow-paced book that could have been potentially made even better had it been written from a different perspective. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for something you can sort of just pick up and put down whenever, or anyone who likes stories with a lot of emotional depth to them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicide, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Homophobia, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Blood, Religious bigotry, Stalking, and Classism

Minor: Cursing and Toxic relationship