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Jeffrey Eugenides: The Virgin Suicides

I've seen only the movie, so perhaps I'm not really qualified to ask this question. Please forgive, if that is your reaction.
But did the book really engender so little sympathy, or empathy, or sorrow, or shock, or horror, or feeling at the girl's suicides, as the commentary in this thread seems to show?
Or am I missing something?
Peder
 
It's rather hard to explain (for me anyways) but that's a big part of the story. The boys are trying to peice together why the girls did it, but they never found out. The boys are obsessed with the girls and it is mentioned by them how coldly the parents, town and news treated them. The fact that the girls were so isolated, the very impersonal way they are gossiped about but no one reaches out to them, the way there parents seemed to compound their problems all were things the boys saw and cared about but could not help. They were just boys after all and working with scraps of information about the girls, they loved them but didn't know them, they wanted to help but could only watch. The feelings were there on the boys part but as teenage boys they were ackward and ill equipped to deal with such a tragedy and it haunted them their whole lives.I think the book does a much better job of portraying this than the movie or I can but I try:)
 
Ronny said:
I think the book does a much better job of portraying this than the movie or I can but I try:)
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Ronny,
Thank you for explaining that. I think you put your finger on a big difference from the movie. In short form, it sounds like the movie showed more of what what was going on, which the boys in the book were wondering about, such as scenes inside the family, and less of the boys themselves, except when the girls were finally locked in and they were trying to communicate. Your explanation clears up a lot for me. It sounds like perhaps the girls were more sympathetic figures in the movie because more of their life was made visible to the audience, and more was seen of them personally?
Peder
 
Yes, I got the feeling that the girls had been isolated their whole lives, the story picks up with Cecilia's first suicide attempt but the boys' only really have brief glimpse of their lives and what they've pulled from the trash on the curb, even though they've lived in the same community their whole lives. The girls' mysterious lives is a large part of the boys' obsession. In the book the girls weren't played up to be as pretty as the girls' in the movie, it was their story, their mystery, their need that attracted the boys.
 
In a sense they were a modern version of the old fairytale, they were princesses in a tower, that the boys desperately wanted to save.
 
Ronny said:
In a sense they were a modern version of the old fairytale, they were princesses in a tower, that the boys desperately wanted to save.
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Ronny,
Carrying that analogy further, it sounds like the movie audience saw the story more from the insde of the tower, while the boys in the book saw it only from the outside. Which can make all the difference in the world how sympathetically the viewer or reader will relate to the girls, especially if in addition they are as pretty as they were in the movie.
Peder
 
As a reader I felt very sympathetic for the girls. Only I felt for them through the boy's emotions. And I think they care a lot for the girls. It remains a lifelong obsession for them, even as they grow up they try to find the reasons for their suicide. And I felt the pov slightly changes from that of a teenaged boy to a grown up man towards the end of the book. I avoided the film so far because I cannot imagine how this can be transferred on film?
 
mederl said:
I avoided the film so far because I cannot imagine how this can be transferred on film?
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Mederl,
I can't be sure, since I haven't read the book, but it sounds like the film fills in and shows scenes that would not be available to the boys, if the book was strictly written through their point of view. Such as scenes of the family within their own living room, and of their mother's domineering personality, and of the father's passivity in those scenes. Or of the girls talking among themselves in their own bedrooms. So it seems that the film is more naturalistic, and more told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator (or all-seeing observer). And the film tells the story perhaps in a more linear fashion than the book. But those are just my guesses. I suspect that showing some of the scenes visually, rather than reading them, also gives them greater impact than they might have in the book. Such as actually seeing the smirking attitude of the guy who tells about his brief relationship to one of the girls.
For me, it was a very powerful movie, and probably not 'the same' as the book, as you correctly surmise it probably couldn't be. However, in the reverse direction, I have been avoiding the book because I saw the movie, and haven't felt like going through such a sad story again.
Peder
 
I watched the film before and after reading the book. I think I enjoyed it better after I had read the book and I don't think she did such a bad job of adapting the story to the screen. There's your normal alterations to make it streamlined and flow but nothing too big was cut out or changed.
 
I read the book... and I definitely didn't have any trouble putting it down. The premise was great but I didn't enjoy the way Eugenides handled it. I never saw the movie, although I would like to someday.
 
Ronny said:
I watched the film before and after reading the book. I think I enjoyed it better after I had read the book and I don't think she did such a bad job of adapting the story to the screen. There's your normal alterations to make it streamlined and flow but nothing too big was cut out or changed.
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Ronny,
That's interesting to hear!
Peder
 
The Virgin Suicides

Hi all,

I recently read this book and loved it! I liked the whole suburbanization, urban sprawl underlying theme, but did not see what this had to do with the girls being virgins and killing themselves.

I can see the purity sybolism behind the girls being virgins, and the Lexi paradox...I guess Im curious how other readers interpret or react to this book since it was not plot heavy and seemed heavily reliant on symbolism to tell the story behind the story.
 
This is one of my favorite books. Normally I love a plot driven read, but it didn't bother me so much in this novel because a plot would have been too much, I think.

Of all the symbolism in the book, the scenes that stick out in my opinion are Cecelia's first attempt at sucide and then when she succeeds in killing herself.

I discovered this book while waiting for the movie to be released, but as with most film adaptations the movie just doesn't capture the book very well. Adore the book, hate the movie.
 
I understand your unfulfilled feeling. I had that with both books. I started on Middlesex and was left with a 'that was an interesting story' feeling. I thought that maybe I was missing something large with his writing style, so I read "Virgin Suicides" to gain a little more insight. Unfortunately after both books, I am still left wondering about a larger moral or insight about both stories. Maybe that is the point; there isn't a nice tidy wrap up, just engaging stories.
 
Movie

I actually thought the movie was a nice companion to the book. It does seem to me that the movie would not be good without having read the book first. But I don't really know since that's what I did.

I did feel the movie was an accurate portrayal of the book though. It really got the emotion; the kind of cold tenderness Eugenides manages to portray.

I read Middlesex before Virgins Suicides and also bought the book because I really enjoyed Middlesex. I can see similarities in writing style (specifically heavy use of symbolism), but Middlesex is much more plot driven.

I like books about characters more than ones that are plot driven, so maybe that's why I really enjoyed this book.

I still wonder what the connection is between all the trees getting cut down, and the girls suicides?
 
I read ...

this book when I was 15 and couldn't put it down. To this day it remains my favourite book. It has a surreal and bewitching quatlity when I read it ... 10/10 for me!
 
I so desperately wanted to like this book - it had been recommended by a friend and after having read the synopsis I thought this was going to be brilliant; it sounded exactly up my street.
However my problem with this book remains to be it's execution, or rather Eugenides execution of what I still believe to be a genius premise and a story which I feel never got told. The way the suicides were written I felt was badly planned - I expected and hoped for them to die one by one rather than one girl and then the next four a few years later. It felt too forced and obvious and more of a pact than the what I initially expected to be a phenomenon of five girls doing so separately, individually and on their own terms. I also felt the parents were badly written and explored. Infact near enough everyone in the book was devoid of a personality except for Lux.
The spacing of the chapters also infuriated me.... was there any need to have both Chapters 3 and 4 as 90 pages long each?? Barely anything happened.
Anyone else have these unfulfilled/"oh is that it?" feelings?
 
I read this after reading Middlesex which I loved. I found Middlesex to be complex and provocative in the way it relates to other fiction, especially Woolf's Orlando. However, I was deeply disappointed with the Virgin Suicides. I didn't feel that it was a bad book as such, but it didn't particularly hold my attention. I read the Marriage Plot after this and absolutely loved it: seems Euginides gets better and better with each book. Again the novel is meta fictive and I found it completely absorbing. I would highly recommend it, maybe even more than Middlesex.

Emily - are you enjoying Catcher in the Rye? I must admit I have had it on my shelf for a number of years now (ashamed face) but haven't got round to reading it. Lots of people think it is amazing and I am sure I will enjoy it, but seem a bit lazy at the moment. Will get round to it in the next five years...promise :p
 
Yes it definitely wasn't a "bad" book, it just felt a bit..... limp and pointless and didn't live up to my expectations. It was far too short and unexplored. But i did enjoy his writing so I think i'll check Middlesex out thank you! :) And yes i did enjoy Catcher in the Rye actually (no need for the same as I probably wouldn't have read it had it not been forced upon me by a friend) but once again I wasn't really sure what the point of the book was - perhaps it just doesn't hold the same impact it did in it's era of release with all the controversy surrounding it. I definitely did enjoy it though! Was brilliantly written in terms of having a lead character with actual personality (unlike in John Green novels) but once again - much too short! Definitely read it and let me know what you think though!
 
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