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publicgibbon2194 's review for:
The Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Virgin Suicides is beautifully written and has some lovely quotes, but it's from a third-party perspective. I read a review where a girl said she loved the perspective but couldn't connect to the characters. This confused me because I feel the perspective is part of the disconnect. We don't learn anything deep or complex about the girls; everything seems superficial.
The only way I can think to describe it is to imagine the classmates you went to school with that you never really spoke to - the ones you only saw in the hallways. Now imagine you wrote an entire book about these classmates. That's how it felt.
I remember watching the movie and feeling like there was no depth to the characters. I assumed the movie had left descriptions and inner dialogue out, as adaptations tend to do. I thought the novel would give me more detail. I feel that even if the girls hadn't committed suicide, the book wouldn't be that different. It's the perspective of teenage boys ogling teenage girls.
I read interviews, and the inspiration for this book came from a five minute conversation he had with a teenage girl whom he never spoke to again. The entire book is based on those five minutes, and then an adult man hypothesizing over why young girls would want to commit suicide. He stated it's a real "mystery."
I can't figure out which is worse - this or 13 Reasons Why, where the man wrote about his daughter's friend. Why are grown men who have never experienced suicidal ideation writing about the experience of suicidal young women? Hell, they could write it from the perspective of a young man. Sure, they don't know the feeling of being suicidal, but at least they know the experience of being a young man. This is so weird to me. If a man wrote a book about me like either of these, I would be mortified. I'm so disappointed.
The only way I can think to describe it is to imagine the classmates you went to school with that you never really spoke to - the ones you only saw in the hallways. Now imagine you wrote an entire book about these classmates. That's how it felt.
I remember watching the movie and feeling like there was no depth to the characters. I assumed the movie had left descriptions and inner dialogue out, as adaptations tend to do. I thought the novel would give me more detail. I feel that even if the girls hadn't committed suicide, the book wouldn't be that different. It's the perspective of teenage boys ogling teenage girls.
I read interviews, and the inspiration for this book came from a five minute conversation he had with a teenage girl whom he never spoke to again. The entire book is based on those five minutes, and then an adult man hypothesizing over why young girls would want to commit suicide. He stated it's a real "mystery."
I can't figure out which is worse - this or 13 Reasons Why, where the man wrote about his daughter's friend. Why are grown men who have never experienced suicidal ideation writing about the experience of suicidal young women? Hell, they could write it from the perspective of a young man. Sure, they don't know the feeling of being suicidal, but at least they know the experience of being a young man. This is so weird to me. If a man wrote a book about me like either of these, I would be mortified. I'm so disappointed.