Daughters of Eve
The girls at Modesta High School feel like they're stuck in some anti-feminist time warp-they're faced with sexism at every turn, and they've had enough. Sponsored by their new art teacher, Ms. Stark, they band together to form the Daughters of Eve. It's more that a school club-it's a secret society, a sisterhood. At first, it seems like they are actually changing the way guys at school treat them. But Ms. Stark urges them to take more vindictive action, and it starts to feel more like revenge-brutal revenge. Blinded by their oath of loyalty, the Daughters of Eve become instruments of vengeance. Can one of them break the spell before real tragedy strikes?
The calendar placed the first day of fall on the twenty-third of September, and on the afternoon of Friday, the twenty-second, Kristy Grange walked slowly down Locust Street, her backpack heavy on her shoulders.
Daughters of Eve was everything and nothing like I expected it to be. Lois Duncan did not fail to entertain, and even creep the daylights out of me in the modernization of Daughters of Eve, which was first published in 1979. Truthfully, I was not expecting the dark, edginess that was present in this book, but I thought that it was brilliantly done and not all to unreasonable which is what made it so scary.
The thing that makes Daughters of Eve such an additively creepy read is the change that comes over each of the girls throughout the book. The majority of them go from being nice, easy going girls (and very naive) to callous vengeance seeking crazies. I loved how Ms. Duncan made the changes so subtle that their new personalities just slowly crept up on you, and when they snapped and went berserk it was like watching a train wreck and you just cannot help but stare.
Generally, I don't like books where the main theme is feminism. They typically rub me the wrong way because the majority of the time the story runs in loops and never progress, and it just seems like a way for the author to get on their soapbox, so while one of the biggest themes in Daughters of Eve was feminism it didn't come across like most books. Ms. Duncan, in my opinion, did an excellent job of adding in feminism without shoving it in your face and making you wish you were reading anything else.
The theory behind the group at school, Daughters of Eve, was interesting; a group of girls who would be like sisters to one another and loyal to each other as well. But take that same close knit group of naive, pliable girls and throw in one who is embittered against the whole male population and you have the makings of the trouble that begins to brew with the newest additions to the group. The DoE's turn towards that dark is what had me unable to pull my eyes from the page because it was kind of creepy to see the whole thing unfold and how much of an impact those few months had on the lives of each of the girls.
Since Daughters of Eve follows more than one character, I'm just going to mention one or two of them.
My favorite character would have to have been Tammy. I liked her because she was the only one who thought that they had gone too far when the Daughters of Eve began taking revenge upon the men/boys who had wronged them. while I liked her for that, I wish that she had had the nerve to report them since each attack seemed to escalate in destruction.
In the first half of the book I really liked Madison, I thought that she was a great character because she seemed to have a lot of inner strength. So I was very disappointed when she fell in with the rest of the girls on taking revenge on those who wronged them. It was especially disappointing because she was in some ways one of the worst offenders, even though she had plenty to be angered over.
What I liked the best about Daughters of Eve would have to be (hands down) Lois Duncan's writing. Her writing style never fails to pull me in to the story and the lives of her characters, and she is one of the few authors whose books I would pick up without even bothering to read a synopsis (because she hasn't disappointed me yet).
If I had to peg just one things about Daughters of Eve that I didn't like, it would have to be the end of the book. Now don't go and get me wrong, I thought the ending of the book was really good, I just would have liked to have seen them have to pay the consequences for all the things that they had done. Although, I did really enjoy how there was an epilogue and you got to see what happened to each of the characters.
Content (will contain spoilers; highlight to see):
language- there was pretty minimal swearing in DoE, both in number of times and choice of foul language (mainly d--- & c---).
sexual content- this one's kind of tricky to rate. One character (mentioned off "screen") sleeps with one of the other girl's ex-boyfriend because she thinks he loves her when he doesn't; also said girl is nearly raped by ex-boyfriend's brother. Another of the girls slept with her fiance and wound up pregnant.
violence- One of the mom's is abused by her husband (and tries to hide it), and later at the end the father hits the girl. The DoE lure the pig of an Ex to the lake where the tie him up, shave him from head to toe, and leave him in nothing but underwear in the cold.
Final Verdict: Daughters of Eve a absolutely creepy read about sisterhood and the poisonous influence of one of their own. An absolute page turner.
Daughters of Eve earns 5 out of 5 pineapples. First Sentence:
Given it was first published in 1979, how does it translate in today's world?
ReplyDeleteHappy blogoversary :)