Sunday 30 December 2012

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colours went together. 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.” 

The Virgin Suicides is the dark and mysterious tale of the five Lisbon sisters who through the course of a year all commit suicide. It's definitely a hard subject to get to grips with, suicide and depression especially with teenagers has always seemed like such a taboo subject but the author does it brilliantly, creating a haunting atmosphere that really sucks you in.  There is very little dialogue in the book, its more of a retelling of the girls lives through the eyes of the boys that adored them.

The book showed the effects on suicide not just with the girls and their family but with the boys, who are now men and they still haven't gotten over what happened that year, constantly searching for answers as to why the girls did what they did or what they could have done to change it. However the reason behind the suicides is somewhat irrelevant, its more about their lives in the often moody and oppressive suburbs.  

Its a beautiful yet haunting story that will stay with you long after you put it down. It's hard to actually put into words how this book left me feeling, just that you must read it.

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