I had so much fun reviewing THE MARRIAGE PLOT that I resolved to review THE VIRGIN SUICIDES next and lastly to read and review MIDDLESEX. That sounds self-indulgent of me, I know, but on the other hand self-indulgence is the main characteristic of this whole new spawn of American book reviews caused by the onset of electronic publishing, so mine should fit in quite well.
Almost every one of the 440 reviews of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES begins, after the obligatory cold blanket assignment of stars, with the reviewer's statement of whether she or he liked the book, cold blanket again, followed by a tract of triteness and cliche very apt to contain the expression "it's" spelled wrong--three more cold blankets seemingly intended to deaden any real thought or sign of life in an actual reader.
The best discussion of a book begins in neutrality, with focus on what it was we just read. Some people sense this. So they try to summarize without knowing a difference between true summary, which is highly selective, and "factual rehash," which is not. What we mostly get are fifth grade or reading group book reports which aren't even reviews much less literary criticism. Who other than author, publisher and agent cares whether someone liked a book or not when, clearly, that somebody is a human goose who is an insult to real geese and may not even know how to read?
The trouble, you see, is that all writing but especially a book review is autobiographical (so fire away--I don't mind).
A special issue of "Grosse Pointe Magazine" lies in front of me right now, a seriously dumbed down journal actually containing a theme to pull its various articles together. The theme, "Mom is wonderful," finds adult expression in those exact words or close to them, but the sole sign of life in this magazine issue is reproduced portraits of their moms by pre-schoolers in watercolor.
Where else could dull editors with no sense of irony, people who never absorbed Philip Wylie's famous statement, "Mom is a jerk," go in search of life in Grosse Pointe? They had to turn to the pre-schoolers, just as Jeffrey Eugenides turned to five sister Lolitas, pre-teen and young teenagers sequestered together, each more gorgeous than the last.
Has the age for true life in Grosse Pointe gone down in the decades since Eugenides penned his expose? That's possible.
But please don't misunderstand. You'd be wrong to conclude that I don't like Grosse Pointe. It's a scatological point, surrounded by water, in the language of its French founders and as Eugenides reveals near the end of the book. Believe me, one can always go to The Dirty Dog to hear great jazz, and at each meeting of the Christ Church foyer groups, there always are two or three persons who demonstrate that the ready made idea that all any adult in Grosse Pointe ever cares about is money is totally untrue. "Wherever there are four Episcopaliens together," one parishioner took it upon himself to explain soon after I arrived, "there's always a fifth."
The Eugenides crowd seems headquartered slightly down the road in Roman Catholic, not Episcopalien surroundings, but Greeks in America have always had trouble choosing the most appropriate local religion after Greek Orthodox. Remember, one of the five teeny-boppers at the core of Eugenides' first novel is named Mary, yet not one of the almost five hundred reviewers, including me, saw fit to look into that.
One reviewer, obviously very sexually repressed, can not fathom what the boys in their tree house can possibly see in the five girls of the nearby, eye-level Lisbon household.
This reviewer needs to come to Grosse Pointe in May (used to be in June), when the threshhold, recurrent and central image of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, zillions of fish flies, emerge from beneath the surface of Lake St. Clair. At the Pier Park, where I go to hit tennis balls, the chitin from their bodies, regurgitated by swarms of ravenous gulls, forms a mountain forty feet high. When I first moved here, my partner took me to a shorefront branch of Andiamo's chain restaurant, since gone under, and while we were seated on the porch, the fish flies "attacked, " and four women at the next table began to shriek.
The word shriek gets no quote marks from me but the word "attacked" does. A fish fly, as Liv Ullman once said about sex, "never hurt nobody." The fish flies are about an inch and a half long--a special breed of Mayfly--and to better understand them, one must realize that sex is what they are all about. They have sex and promptly die. They've been coming every May for the half century my 98-year-old friend Frieda Johnston has lived here and have never missed.
The fish flies explain the young girls who also die very young and are very sexy, don't you know. Here's my question: Is the death of the fish flies or that of the young girls tragic as so many of the 500 projecting reviewers, often moody teeny-boppers themselves, think? Furthermore, are the deaths of these girls even sad when we consider what lies ahead for them? Grosse Pointe is a very pleasant place, a carefree island almost--but not quite, because of an underlying horror which perhaps is best expressed in the word "banal" and in terms of repressed fear (e.g., of all the blacks in Detroit who have to come to Grosse Pointe if they want to Trick or Treat) or of brain and breast cancer ever since the spraying and destruction of elms that Eugenides writes so well about.
Rick Moody, another student of John Hawkes at Brown, tried to find the same repressed feelings and sublimated terror and unrealized human potential on the gold coast of Connecticut but not with the same success as Eugenides. His novel, THE ICE STORM, also like THE VIRGIN SUICIDES made into a movie, was mostly a dreary tract about swapping of Stepford wives although it contains a truly terrifying and beautiful image of a live power wire thrashing about in fallen ice. All of us students of John Hawkes, of course, are familiar with THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathaniel West, which is probably the best thing ever written about Los Angeles, California and in much the same way.
As most of the fish fly reviewers are quick to try and push you into thinking, MIDDLESEX is much better than THE VIRGIN SUICIDES except for two admirable persons who think the opposite. I reserve judgment, but have heard that MIDDLESEX sprawls like THE MARRIAGE PLOT. THE VIRGIN SUICIDES does not sprawl. It is all self-contained, like Grosse Pointe, Michigan. It is lyrical and wonderfully surreal and yet is true to the real place in which it is set, and its (look, Ma, no apostrophe) tight structure is true refreshment .
I am willing to bet, before I read MIDDLESEX, that THE VIRGIN SUICIDES, not MIDDLESEX, is the reason that Jeffrey Eugenides received his Pulitzer Prize just as THE PAINTED BIRD, not BEING THERE was the reason that the late Jerzy Kosinski received his.
It is not just the Amazon reviewers who are sleepy in their heads and slow to develop consciousness. Yes, Pulitzer committee members, like people on any committee anywhere are just like that, too.
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The Lisbon girls were thirteen (Cecilia), and fourteen (Lux), and fifteen (Bonnie), and sixteen (Mary), and seventeen (Therese).Highlighted by 1,015 Kindle readers- She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.Highlighted by 816 Kindle readers
- “Basically, what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she’d fly.”Highlighted by 725 Kindle readers
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Came damaged
Came covered in this dried yellow around the top of the book! I originally thought this happened during delivery but the packaging was clean and the other book I ordered also had no stains. I wouldn't mind the stains but I only bought this book because my first copy got oil stains from a sandwich in my backpack and damaged my book! So to get one that has the same damage is quite annoying! The book's spine is peeling and the pages are bumpy because of the liquid.
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Eduardo
Menor que eu imaginava, mas muito bom
Reviewed in Brazil on June 10, 2022
Eduardo
Reviewed in Brazil on June 10, 2022
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Ania
If you saw the movie and wanted the book - get the book!
Reviewed in Canada on September 29, 2021
