Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

Αυτόχειρες παρθένοι by Jeffrey Eugenides

42 reviews

lexigrce's review against another edition

challenging 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? No

4.0

this book is just so tragic, the irony of telling a whole story encapsulating these girls’ lives when they truly didn’t know them at all. i remember first watching the movie when i was maybe 16 or 17 and writing it off. but when i rewatched it a year ago, despite being even further from the sisters’ ages than i originally was, i actually understood. reading the book somehow feels more real, seeing the story as it is without the added glitz of familiar celebrity faces, a bunch of made up stories constructed so that the boys could feel interesting and connected to the girls, as if they could even for a second understand what it felt like to be them.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

elysianbud's review against another edition

dark mysterious 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? Yes

3.5

Very odd book, but I very much enjoyed the writing style - the descriptions were really well done. Felt quite slow to read yet I still managed to finish it in about six hours. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism

Minor: Ableism and Racial slurs

kibiiiariii's review against another edition

dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

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

mgoodrick's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• 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: Child abuse and Confinement

Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Blood, Abortion, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

arieslofi's review against another edition

dark reflective sad fast-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Alcohol

Minor: Alcoholism

sasshq's review against another edition

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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child death, Death, Racial slurs, Self harm, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Alcohol

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

blueberryelf's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Misogyny, Self harm, Suicide, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, Cultural appropriation, and Injury/Injury detail