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A review by cocoonofbooks
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
4.0
This is not a plot-driven book—we're told at the outset what will happen to all the Lisbon girls—which made it difficult to get absorbed in, but at the end I still had to conclude that this is a very good book that provides a lot of food for thought and discussion.
Through the story of the Lisbon girls, Eugenides shows the reader all the messed-up ways that our society handles suicide. The family's neighbors endlessly analyze and speculate on the family and the reasons for their daughters' suicides, but they don't actually reach out to help the family (except in benign, distant ways, like shoveling snow outside the house). The first-person plural narrator does show interest in the Lisbon girls, but more as objects of fascination than as individual people. The girls tend to be lumped together and even mixed up, something mirrored and emphasized by Eugenides' choice to have the novel narrated by an equally indistinguishable "we," but it's clear throughout that the girls each have very distinct personalities.
Eugenides made an interesting and intentional choice in how to tell this story, not from inside the Lisbon family but from an outside plural narrator piecing together the narrative from evidence and interviews compiled after the fact. In this way he gently mocks the idea that we can ever fully know what goes on in another person's head or causes them to do the things they do.
Although this book didn't hold my attention as much as some, it's worth a read for its observations and greater messages.
Through the story of the Lisbon girls, Eugenides shows the reader all the messed-up ways that our society handles suicide. The family's neighbors endlessly analyze and speculate on the family and the reasons for their daughters' suicides, but they don't actually reach out to help the family (except in benign, distant ways, like shoveling snow outside the house). The first-person plural narrator does show interest in the Lisbon girls, but more as objects of fascination than as individual people. The girls tend to be lumped together and even mixed up, something mirrored and emphasized by Eugenides' choice to have the novel narrated by an equally indistinguishable "we," but it's clear throughout that the girls each have very distinct personalities.
Eugenides made an interesting and intentional choice in how to tell this story, not from inside the Lisbon family but from an outside plural narrator piecing together the narrative from evidence and interviews compiled after the fact. In this way he gently mocks the idea that we can ever fully know what goes on in another person's head or causes them to do the things they do.
Although this book didn't hold my attention as much as some, it's worth a read for its observations and greater messages.