false 10956 0747560595 9780747560593 15597 1262 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10956.The_Virgin_Suicides 1467 Jeffrey Eugenides 114483 11285 One chapter in and I'm already blown away by Eugenides prose. 0 2009-05-20T07:19:58-07:00 779925 32 2009-05-20T07:19:58-07:00 4 0 false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 09 18:09:25 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 14:09:01 -0700 2009
Things you need to know about this book: it is about suicide, which is sad and depressing. It is about a family of five sisters, the Lisbon girls, all of whom kill themselves, which is sad and depressing times five. But most of all, it's about a gang of neighborhood boys, who collectively narrate the story of the Lisbon girls years and years after their deaths, and who have been trying to figure out the mystery of the girls since the day they first set their collective eyes on them.

Eugenides prose is masterful throughout the book - slow, languid, and beautiful, much like the Lisbon girls themselves. He explores many themes through his doomed characters - ideas about life and death, freedom and the suburbs, love and loss, and most of all what it's like to be a young woman, repressed, depressed, and desperate for any kind of release. My favorite parts of the book where those when the narrators describe the interior of the Lisbon house, the different, disgusting and heady ways in which it disintegrates as the family falls apart.

Overall, a lovely and mysterious book. I'm looking forward to reading Middlesex as soon as I get my hands on it!

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