The Virgin Suicides: A Novel (original 1993; edition 2009)

"With most people," he said, "suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty."

This was a strange read for me, yet still managed to be… I wouldn’t say enjoyable. Maybe intriguing is more like it. This book filled me with major confusion as I had constant questions arise since you don’t get the full picture as this story is told from a third-party, an outside party, rather than being told from the POV of one of the sisters. On top of that, it’s actually told as almost a recollection of people who were affected by these girls and their actions.

I had of course heard of this story over the years but had never managed to pick it up. Never actually watched the film either so I wasn’t completely aware of what to expect. Even know, writing this review several weeks after finishing the book, I’m not sure how to describe how I felt about it. What I remember most is the author's vivid writing; I will definitely be interested in reading more from him. This was an interesting and thought provoking book but at the same time is a horrible and shocking book that I’m not sure whether or not to recommend. Very sad, very heartbreaking, and one that I certainly won’t be forgetting. ( )

This is not a good book.

Also, I do not care about Trip's nipples. There, I said it.
( )

I wanted to like this more.

It was very well written - insert various burblings about the male gaze - however, I feel it suffered from a lack of grounding context. The story is recounted from this non-specific point in the future by this/these narrator/s, but there wasn't, for me, the reason for it. You've got this male gaze but I didn't feel it had the level of self-awareness there; it doesn't feel quite as deliberate as it could in either direction (ignorance is a great trick to pull).

As a result, I felt the ending sputtered and fizzled out rather than drawing to a close. Lacking, but the rest of it was excellent. ( )

It's very hard to figure out how I felt about this book. I read it practically all in one go (curled up in bed with it angled to the light, getting a headache from tiny text, with a hot water bottle under my feet!) and it's still sort of sinking in. It felt like I was meant to read it all in one go, since it had no chapter breaks.

It felt rather... numb. Suicide normally touches me somewhere raw, but the suicides themselves seemed somehow ritualistic and the narrators, by not being startled, speaking from years later, added to that effect. It also feels inevitable: I wasn't reading in some kind of breathless anticipation, but rather with that sense of fate, inevitability, no surprises.

The narration itself is an interesting choice. Lots of people are describing it as a 'Greek chorus'; I don't know if that was the author's intent. That comparison sort of works, anyway. It felt natural for the story, and appropriate for the collective connection they felt to the girls. It felt least natural when separate boys were differentiated, and I was oddly less interested in them and more interested in the collective.

Interesting to read, anyway: the star rating may fluctuate as I absorb what I've been reading and figure out more thoughts on it! ( )

excellent! ( )