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A review by everie
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
An interesting zoom-out on a basic suburban neighborhood in the 70s, centering around the narrators' ogling obsessions with the suicides of five sisters over the course of about a year. Fuddles along for about 50-100 pages more than it needs to. You can tell it's a first novel, and ofc you can DEFINITELY tell it was written by a man named Jeffrey lol
I hesitated to read it for a long time, mostly because of the title and meh experiences with one of the author's other books, but I now wish I'd read it in college or a book club so I could hash out my thoughts about it with some people and compare takes. So definitely an interesting book!
The greek chorus of boys viewing the girls through their own romantic (and limited) notions add a great layer to an intensly fraught, private story they'll never know the truth about. They don't know or understand the Lisbon girls (or even try very hard to, while they're still alive). No matter how they try to insert themselves in their story and pretend closeness to the girls, all they have left in the end are unanswered questions, unaddressed trauma, and a moldering museum of the girls' belongings.
The author does a great job of showing how they can't move on from this--though the intense focus on a bunch of horny boys gets old fast (hence the "this coulda been a shorter book") and the last sections of the book go on and on before ending on a strong final two pages. Very literary fiction of you sir but also very clear you bit off more than you could chew with this premise and didn't know exactly how to wrap up.
I want to see the movie now!
I hesitated to read it for a long time, mostly because of the title and meh experiences with one of the author's other books, but I now wish I'd read it in college or a book club so I could hash out my thoughts about it with some people and compare takes. So definitely an interesting book!
The greek chorus of boys viewing the girls through their own romantic (and limited) notions add a great layer to an intensly fraught, private story they'll never know the truth about. They don't know or understand the Lisbon girls (or even try very hard to, while they're still alive). No matter how they try to insert themselves in their story and pretend closeness to the girls, all they have left in the end are unanswered questions, unaddressed trauma, and a moldering museum of the girls' belongings.
The author does a great job of showing how they can't move on from this--though the intense focus on a bunch of horny boys gets old fast (hence the "this coulda been a shorter book") and the last sections of the book go on and on before ending on a strong final two pages. Very literary fiction of you sir but also very clear you bit off more than you could chew with this premise and didn't know exactly how to wrap up.
I want to see the movie now!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide