Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

3 reviews

applesodaperson's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-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

This one was an interesting one for sure. A good thing I liked was how atmospheric it was, and how vivid the descriptions of the Lisbon’s house were. But, this book also showed its age with how problematic some of it was. It definitely romanticizes suicide a lot, without a real understanding of the mental illness that causes it. I also would have vastly preferred that it be from the point of view of the sisters, instead of a bunch of pervy men. 
Read from the Provo library.
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grboph's review against another edition

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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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jenny_librarian's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

2.5

This is a book about the patriarchal tendency of dehumanizing women. Which should be enough to tell you why I didn’t like it at all.

The writing itself is good, but that’s about the only redeeming quality to this book. The rest is just men being… well, men. I get what the author wanted to achieve with this, but why it needed to be written in this way is beyond me.

I keep hoping the next “classic” I read is going to be better, and I keep being disappointed because those “classics” were written by allocishet white men in a time women were seen as little more than property.
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