The Virgin Suicides

The teenaged male gaze is essentially what you'd expect, but Eugenides makes it pretty: “We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.”

4.5

Let me tell you something before I review this book. Before I went on to read this, I've already seen the movie once, when I was a child, and I got the chance to re-watch it again around September this year. I instantly fell in love with the film adaptation, and a few days later, I found myself downloading an e-book version of it. I started reading The Virgin Suicides around September, as well, and I finally decided to finish it as of today (12:38 A.M. December 16, 2015).

One thing I love about the film is that it remained faithful to this book, which is a rare scenario in book-to-movie adaptations. You'd be pleased to know that Sofia Coppola (who's one of my favorite directors, btw) and her team did a terrific job on putting it on film.

Now onto the book. It's such a quick read. But to be honest, I couldn't find myself to love the book. It was dark and depressing and I felt very sorry for the Lisbon sisters' parents. I can't ever imagine 5 of their children, let alone 1 child, commit suicide all at the same time. It's very gut-wrenching! I tried reflecting on it, afterwards. As parents of the sisters, how do you move on and go after that event?

I love Eugenides' writing style. The book was well-written, the story line was cohesive and the narration from the boys made the characters come to life. The use of third-person plural was ingenious, although I would have expected more character development. The ending was not conclusive either. Since it is told in an outside perspective, the answers to many of the questions remained unanswered, only assumed.

But overall, I was impressed by this novel and the movie alike. I highly recommend this to everyone, but prepare yourself for a lot of feels.

What could I even say about this book that hasn't already been said before. The writing is gorgeous and the story moves along at a solid pace. The only problem I had with it was the last chapter just felt really slow. This book in many areas was descriptive to a point where i felt as if i were in the house with the girls, feeling the same pain, aching, and longing that they did. This could all be because I watched the movie before I read the book but either way this book was so amazing. It is just so captivating to think of yourself as one of the boys watching the girls they idolized in a sense one by one. There were so many parts I underlined as I read it and so many moments where i just had to put the book down and try not to cry. Solid 5 stars. Jeffery writing this thru the view of the boys in the town and using non singular pronouns to describe the narrator is genius. That is what drew me in and made me feel connected because it was as if I was one of the boys watching all of this happen. The ending was cruel, . I could write what feels like an entire essay on this book and the symbolism of the girls, trees, graveyard, and the take of how suicide effects not only the family but a community, how girls are seen thru the eyes of others at a teenage state, and the suicides themselves and how they all relate. There is so much jammed into a book of roughly 250 pages and I've never had a book effect or hit me like this.