Reviews with content warning for Gore - Las Virgenes Suicidas

Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Las Virgenes Suicidas by Jeffrey Eugenides

19 reviews

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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nenya's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

I read this book as the start of manic hot girl summer (and also to celebrate the end of my reading slump) and while I read this relatively fast, I must say I expected it to be far more triggering and manic than it ended up being. And I‘m not gonna lie, I kind of wish it would have been, because I enjoy being creeped out by books - but this was pretty chill actually. I had expected the suicides to be skin crawlingly gore-y but instead they were two pages of slightly disturbing but heavily announced death. What I must say was really interesting though, was the narrative being told in first person plural and, in addition to that, unreliably - something I haven’t encountered before and really enjoyed, but even here, I feel like there was a lot more room for mystery and manipulation of the reader. However, it is most definitely not a bad book - I‘m just not sure whether I‘d like to re-read it one day.
(Oh also: there is the mention of the N-word which really threw me off, as well as casual racism and other problematic themes that were normalized in the novel and not addressed or seen as problematic by the narrators)

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chloeam3103's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

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beanwa's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

I absolutely adored this book. I loved the writing (Eugenides is such an amazing writer) and I really enjoyed the narration style. I loved the atmosphere the book built around the sisters, and how their story reveals so much about the neighbourhood around them and the fears of the time. This is a book I will definitely read again, one of my favourites for sure.

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thalia's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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

3.5

Content Warnings

wildlifelane's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

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fflur's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-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

4.0

Very interesting book - did have me hooked but more so out of a morbid curiosity. The narrators were incredibly creepy and gross many times throughout the book, but I did become quite attached to the five girls. It was pretty depressing, but I thought that it was incredibly interesting in the sense that most books I've read involving suicide don't focus in the effects on family members as much, which this book did.

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