Jeffrey Eugenides
I’m not going to lie, I only wanted to read this book because I love the movie, The Virgin Suicides, and at first I was a little disappointed. The more I kept reading though, the more I was hooked.
The story takes place in the suburbs of Detroit, through the point of view of grown up boys who in their adolescence watched as 5 sisters in their neighborhood commit suicide throughout the course of a year. I think it’s interesting to note that this was published in 1993, as well as Girl, Interrupted which I feel like is in the same sad girl genre. Suicide rates were also increasing in the early 90’s, this is also around the same time as Kurt Cobain’s suicide.
The way the book is written is interesting, I guess because of the point of view it’s in – it makes you feel like you know the sisters very well and like you can relate, while at the same time making them feel ethereal. I think the narrator is a little too vague, and for a while in the beginning of the book it’s a little confusing of who is actually telling the story. But I like how it isn’t in any of the sister’s point of view because it keeps them mysterious and intangible. Although it kind of gives off this ideal of what teenage girlhood is like, and I guess how the neighborhood boys see the girls – but it’s not giving the real inside look of the struggle of girlhood, how hard it really is. The view point of the neighborhood boys don’t really give you that understanding of how emotional and tragic being a teenage girl can really be, it just shows it from the outside looking in.
While reading at the beginning, you kind of feel like you’re just waiting for the other sisters to die because you know they all die but it takes a long time to get to that point and it’s kind of like you’re just waiting for it to happen and the lead up really isn’t all that exciting. I honestly have a lot of mixed feelings about the book, it really is written so creatively and unlike anything else though so you just have to keep reading it, you don’t want to put it down. Overall I highly recommend reading The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides.