The Virgin Suicides - Book Review

The Virgin Suicides was on my to-read list for months and finally I took the time to read it. It’s not a very long book; it only have just over 200 pages, but for some reason it took me a long time to get through. I’m not really sure why, maybe I was busy doing other things, but I did enjoy it.

If you don’t know The Virgin Suicides is about the five Lisbon girls who all commit suicide. The story is told by the boys who lived on the same street as the Lisbons and kept tabs on the girls while they were alive and tried to make sense some sense of their deaths.

The thing that really made this book for me was the writing Jeffrey Eugenides is a great writer, he was able to catch my interest and keep it. This is really important because there were times when I was reading and started to think to myself that he has gone off on a tangent. Yes, there were times when a person would be mentioned as knowing the Lisbon girls back in the day and then there would be a detail description about what that person was doing now. I could have done without these descriptions, but the writing was so good that I can forgive that fact.

As for the plot I really enjoyed hearing about the Lisbon girls and what their lives were like. The interesting twist is that it is an outsiders looking in, you never really know what things are really like in the Lisbon house you just get this very biased opinion. The boys worshiped the Lisbon girls and because they don’t have the answers the girls remain a mystery throughout the whole story. You find out what is going to happen on page one, but that doesn’t take anything away from the story, I was interesting to get even the little bit of insight into the Lisbon girls lives to try to make a little bit of sense from their suicides.

I would definitely recommend The Virgin Suicides to anyone who thinks that it sound intriguing, but be warned that I don’t think that this book is for everyone. The writing is great, but the subject matter is very dark.