What happens when a seven-year-old girl gets an invitation to have tea at Buckingham Palace with the Queen? Nothing ordinary, if the girl is Freya. We learn that the Queen likes to boogie, eats beans on toast (with the inevitable result) and is compassionate and understanding. Told with Giles Andreae’s trademark warmth and humour, but with an added poignancy when the Queen meets Christopher, … meets Christopher, Freya’s brother, this is a perfect celebration of the Queen for her Diamond Jubilee.
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I’d recommend The Virgin Suicides. Besides the fact that Eugenides prose is beautiful, it’s overall interesting and original.
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the book was the point of view. I found myself thinking a lot about why Eugenides chose to tell the story from the “we,” and more specifically from a group of boys next door who develop a lifelong and obsessive relationship with the Lisbon girls’ lives and deaths. It added a unique layer to the story.
The whole book felt a bit like a dream (albeit it not a happy one), where my belief was suspended and the world felt all-encompassing but a bit separate from the real one.
I’ve been thinking about what to say about this book. It tells the story of how the suicides of a family of sisters affects the street where they live. All of the sisters are teenagers of various ages, and the story is told through a third party narrator, which gives the whole story an element of disbelief. How can you trust a narrator who wasn’t there? But the story is told through this narrator’s investigation after the fact, and his obsession along with his other friends of the Lisbon sisters. It’s a startling perspective on suicide and its impact on the greater community. The particular details used to illustrate each character was minimal and effective giving the story a stark, powerful air. It’s a story that will leave you thinking.
Great book
This was an interesting read; a provocative, and at times disturbing story, but a story with much more than what lies on the surface. I have heard about this book over the years, but I think the fact that my son and his wife just moved to the town in which it was set prompted me to read it now. Often referred to as a coming of age novel, I think that it is much more than that. The story is in some ways a metaphor for the decline of Detroit and its affluent northern suburbs.
Over the course of a year, all five Lisbon daughters commit suicide. They have been sheltered and protected at home with little social experience. In spite of these restrictions they manage to wander about in the wee hours of the morning, and one of the daughters becomes extremely sexually active. The sisters become an elusive mystery for the boys of the town as they stalk the girls from a distance, imagining what they are doing behind the grimy windows of the large old house.
The narrator of the book seems to be the boys in later years, but with “exhibits,” and studies, one wonders who is actually relating the story. This again is part of the mystery that Eugenides seems to wrap this story in. As the grandmother of one of the boys said, ” In the end, it wasn’t death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.”
I prefer the author’s book Middlesex to this one. I found it difficult to understand the sisters’ motivations.
This is one book that will stay with you for a very long time.
Simply marvelous.
A wonderful first novel.
A deep and thoughtful delving into suburban family interaction. This will stay with you long after you finish reading it.
Some of the best writing you will read!
Even at the end of the book, I found no real explanation but thought the book did its best explain a great deal.