Reviews tagging 'Domestic abuse'

Las Virgenes Suicidas by Jeffrey Eugenides

34 reviews

lilybisliterate's review against another edition

dark emotional 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? Yes

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Racial slurs, Suicide attempt, Death, Domestic abuse, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Stalking, Self harm, and Suicide

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: Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Toxic friendship, Suicide attempt, Self harm, Racism, Physical abuse, Pedophilia, Misogyny, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Suicidal thoughts, Stalking, Sexual content, Racial slurs, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Classism, Eating disorder, Toxic relationship, and Suicide

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

Minor: Blood, Confinement, and Domestic abuse

fancymcgee's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.75

you know, i love to emphasize with female characters, but their mother was a villain. the story is told from the perspective of an outsider, but as you read you know something is happening inside those walls that you will never fully grasp. i also don’t love the language the boys use for the girls, but in the end when they realize that they truly didn’t know these girls and romantized people they never truly met, was good. first opening this book, i didn’t know that i would finish it, if i even wanted to. putting it down, i just feel hollow and angry. maybe that was the authors intent, to leave you feeling like even though you were essentially one of the boys looking in on this sad family, you would never understand what happened behind closed doors. can’t say i loved or hated this book. can’t even say i loved those girls, cause did we ever even know them? 
“daughters of the community” 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Misogyny, Death, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Emotional abuse, Drug abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Medical content, Blood, Suicide attempt, Body horror, Self harm, Stalking, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Mental illness, and Medical trauma

Minor: Racial slurs

nenac0's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Suicide, Mental illness, Domestic abuse, and Child abuse

Minor: Alcoholism, Vomit, Sexual violence, and Racial slurs

lottselgar's review against another edition

dark mysterious 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

4.5

i have no words for how much this book drew me in to the minds of the lisbon sisters without ever actually entering their minds at all 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Mental illness, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Domestic abuse

Minor: Racial slurs

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: Death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Child death, Confinement, Medical content, Mental illness, Self harm, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Gore, Homophobia, Classism, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Emotional abuse, Ableism, Racial slurs, Racism, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Domestic abuse, Sexism, Pedophilia, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence

Minor: Cursing and Toxic relationship

alexxrose's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.5

Incredibly well written in a slow, reflective pace that draws the reader into the world and asks them to stay and mourn with the narrators. 
There's a kind of hypnotic quality to the way 70s suburbia is slowly invaded by pain and tragedy. 
The book loses a few points for the sometimes tacky and bordering on creepy descriptions of the girls. A few times it made me cringe to read how young girls bodies and sexual discovery was over romanticized by the author. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Domestic abuse

technobabble's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Suicide

moraleegray's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Stalking, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Religious bigotry, and Adult/minor relationship