Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Las Virgenes Suicidas by Jeffrey Eugenides

97 reviews

sadiaa's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

2.5

This book has a cult following so I was intrigued to read it. This book wasn't for me and I found myself dragging my feet to finish this book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Grief, and Suicide attempt

zhazhadiamond's review against another edition

reflective 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Confinement, Self harm, Suicide, and Blood

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

cm1922's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious medium-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

4.25

I love the narrator and the other boys almost savior complex pov throughout the entire book along with the narration in general. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide and Suicide attempt

Minor: Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, and Self harm

antoniav's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement, Mental illness, and Sexual content

saoreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Its gruesome details are described as prosaic and poetic, with the metaphorical lines humming along the monstrosity of taking one's own life. It gave statistical inputs and the relating aspects of typical boys' adolescence, making it literally impossible to forget their first loves. The voyeurism was in one point of view, yet with the other it was the same too, though the latter didn't get to live long. After years and decades of searching for the "why", it somehow led to a point of redundancy, evidence, bias, and notions agreeing with the deed itself. That growing up sucks and daydreaming is better. Life wasn't in their control, so they took matters into their own hands, though it spoke of unrelenting grief hanging to a thread and plenty of factors no one might've noted. The fact that the parent's way of putting up their children suffocated them, or it might have stemmed from a faulty gene (or so they say, and to the extremes of five of them all?), or they took religion in their own different interpretations, there are plenty of what ifs that arise. However, the decision made brought agony and awful influence to their surroundings. It's one to assess yet not to act upon.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Deadnaming, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

_eleanorgreen8_'s review against another edition

dark informative mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

3.75

This book was unlike any that I've ever read, and had a really interesting, atmospheric quality. The story of the Lisbon girls' suicides was told from the collective perspective of the boys who were weirdly infauated with them, and the immense detail of everyone's feelings was engaging. however, the book didn't have any chapters which made the whole thing feel like a very long and often confusing stream of consciousness. I also felt that most of the plot was just the boys observing the Lisbon girls, and not much happened expect at the very beginning and end of the book. overall, it was an interesting and unusual book, but felt very slow despite its length. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death and Suicide

Moderate: Mental illness, Sexual content, Medical content, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement, Domestic abuse, and Blood

kathleenjones's review against another edition

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Racial slurs, and Alcohol

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