The Virgin Suicides

by Jeffrey Eugenides

“What are you doing here, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.”

“Obviously, Doctor,” she said, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”

The Lisbon girls were thirteen (Cecilia), and fourteen (Lux), and fifteen (Bonnie), and sixteen (Mary), and seventeen (Therese).

Sissen said that he wanted to bring it to us, that it wasn’t gross but a beautiful thing, you had to see it, like a modern painting or something,

is he… ALRIGHT?

“I’m going to watch those girls taking their showers,”

What?