Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

12 reviews

helloooooo's review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The book shows the objectification of girls really good. The writing style was a little boring, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the book. 
It kinda makes me feel sick. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Suicide, and Abandonment

emmafagan's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

Destroyed me in every possible way. A book that makes you feel the tragedy of its characters so deeply it’ll take your soul outside of your person and into theirs. No doubt one of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. Will never re read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Sexual content and Abandonment

hanna_ix's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Abandonment, and Alcohol

kshertz's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

What a super sad depressing book. I feel like so much of what happens with these girls is left out because of the perspective it’s being told from. But it’s an interesting one. It’s just hard to say this was a good book. It was a hard read and Probably too gritty for me. But I pushed through. Now I need a shower and to only read rom coms for the next week.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Suicide attempt, Abandonment, and Alcohol

absolute_gemma's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Pregnancy, and Abandonment

brownsugar25's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

 

I'm actually quite out of words for this book.
There were many moments in the book that had flabber-ghasted about the treatement the entire societal views had about the Lisbon girls, moments where I thought they had reached for help multiple times with others, moments I was angered at the sheer fact that their parents didn't want to take the blame-especially Mrs. Lisbon for what went forth with her daugthers, moments I truely couldn't wrap my head around with Dr.Hornicker.

Because there are no words. The boys who watched them across grow up knew them so much better than their parents did, their curiosity is much bigger and beyond than the infatuation they shared with the girls. They truely wanted to find the fact on why they did, trying to understand the girls rather than what others blamed it up- their young age, their involvement with religious cults (cecilia's virgin Mary concept), their parent's ridiculous punishments, it was their deterioration of watching an entire family go within a year's worth of time.

And I think the neighborhood at the end also didn't really fair much either. It's truly melancholic to read, I had watched the movie years ago. But the book had much focus on the non-objectification of young teenage girls- told through the lens of teenage boys. There actually wasn't much sexualization here to be honest, the movie focused more on it (duh, commercialization). This book talks about a time where politics were in from a small town, the weather was changing, the communicim that was blooming, the recession that was just around the corner, & then the hippies.

Overall, a good read.

Most memorable scene from the book: When Mary camps out in the living room in a sleeping bag and her parents in the master bedroom right after she gets discharged from the hospital to come to an empty house. It reminded Mr Lisbon of when the family moved in about 11 years ago, and the moving vans hadn't come in yet so the house had been empty, and the family had to camp with a tent with the girls. Reading bed time stories under lanterns in the tents they set up. So when Mr. Lisbon woke up in the morning and spotted Mary sleeping in the tent, it took him back to a time pre-puberty of the girls when they were kids and he said "Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I'd forget everything had happened. I'd go down the hall and for a moment, we'd just moved in again. The girls were asleep in their tent in the living room." This scene BROKE me.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Abandonment

Moderate: Addiction and Alcoholism

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

verbamatic's review

dark emotional reflective sad 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? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Toxic relationship, and Abandonment

margozaldivar's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Stalking, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Body shaming and Abandonment

charlottesurrey's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective fast-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? It's complicated

4.5

This book left me shocked, triggered and thoughtful all in the best way possible. I'm a very impatient reader and the chase of the book which tells you what happens on the first page was exactly what I wanted, although not the normal form of book I gravitate to. The book was also written in 1st person, but uses we not I - it's an intresting way to have the narrator in the situation reporting 1st hand but needing no focus on their character.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Suicide attempt, and Abandonment