Take a photo of a barcode or cover
jiaa_reader 's review for:
The Virgin Suicides
by Jeffrey Eugenides
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The Virgin Suicides is a book that embodies beauty with a tragic face.
Written as a collective narrative by a group of boys infatuated with the Lisbon girls, Euginides creates a beautifully written prose with deep emotion and heaviness, mixed in with the boys' memories and the suburban nature of American middle and upper-class life. The suicides were never hidden, but the starkness of how they were written still shocks me.
The book utilises themes of contrast, how summer and freedom are mixed with death and decay, and beauty with melancholia. Reading this book in summer, when the sun is slowly setting and the trees stand fruitful, it made me feel as though I were there, watching and waiting for one of the girl's shadows to pass my window, and life and death are but a cycle. The seclusion of the sisters alludes to a mystery, something untouchable yet still very magnetic, in which the boys themselves feel. The memory of the Lisbon sisters' lives on through the boys, even when the town forgets them. Their memory lives on even when those same boys become men, sparking readers to acknowledge how much of an impact the sisters' deaths must have been on those boys, stunting them.
Even at the very end, there is still a mystery of why. Why did they kill themselves? This same question persisists in me, and in those men. Hopefully next Summer, I'll find out.
Written as a collective narrative by a group of boys infatuated with the Lisbon girls, Euginides creates a beautifully written prose with deep emotion and heaviness, mixed in with the boys' memories and the suburban nature of American middle and upper-class life. The suicides were never hidden, but the starkness of how they were written still shocks me.
The book utilises themes of contrast, how summer and freedom are mixed with death and decay, and beauty with melancholia. Reading this book in summer, when the sun is slowly setting and the trees stand fruitful, it made me feel as though I were there, watching and waiting for one of the girl's shadows to pass my window, and life and death are but a cycle. The seclusion of the sisters alludes to a mystery, something untouchable yet still very magnetic, in which the boys themselves feel. The memory of the Lisbon sisters' lives on through the boys, even when the town forgets them. Their memory lives on even when those same boys become men, sparking readers to acknowledge how much of an impact the sisters' deaths must have been on those boys, stunting them.
Even at the very end, there is still a mystery of why. Why did they kill themselves? This same question persisists in me, and in those men. Hopefully next Summer, I'll find out.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm, Suicide, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Mental illness, Abandonment
Minor: Alcohol