The Virgin Suicides

The teenaged male gaze is essentially what you'd expect, but Eugenides makes it pretty: “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.”

4.5

Let me tell you something before I review this book. Before I went on to read this, I've already seen the movie once, when I was a child, and I got the chance to re-watch it again around September this year. I instantly fell in love with the film adaptation, and a few days later, I found myself downloading an e-book version of it. I started reading The Virgin Suicides around September, as well, and I finally decided to finish it as of today (12:38 A.M. December 16, 2015).

One thing I love about the film is that it remained faithful to this book, which is a rare scenario in book-to-movie adaptations. You'd be pleased to know that Sofia Coppola (who's one of my favorite directors, btw) and her team did a terrific job on putting it on film.

Now onto the book. It's such a quick read. But to be honest, I couldn't find myself to love the book. It was dark and depressing and I felt very sorry for the Lisbon sisters' parents. I can't ever imagine 5 of their children, let alone 1 child, commit suicide all at the same time. It's very gut-wrenching! I tried reflecting on it, afterwards. As parents of the sisters, how do you move on and go after that event?

I love Eugenides' writing style. The book was well-written, the story line was cohesive and the narration from the boys made the characters come to life. The use of third-person plural was ingenious, although I would have expected more character development. The ending was not conclusive either. Since it is told in an outside perspective, the answers to many of the questions remained unanswered, only assumed.

But overall, I was impressed by this novel and the movie alike. I highly recommend this to everyone, but prepare yourself for a lot of feels.