Reads a lot like an overly intense and dramatized documentary, but still interesting and very well written. At times it seemed hard to empathize with the entire situation since the parents and the girls were all such insane/inexplicable people. Even if this was the goal that was emphasized by the perspective the book took, it was slightly frustrating... ( )

Most of my theories on the world change every few years. New evidence, new voices in the mix, new ways of thinking tend to do that to a person. But my theory that every book written in the third-person plural is a masterpiece was formed when I read The Virgin Suicides back in my now-distant teens, and it remains unchallenged. ( )

I don't know what to rate this book. Well-written? Yes. But on a personal level, it was disturbing and I probably shouldn't have pushed myself. I've picked it up and put it down many times before; once I got a dozen pages in, I said "Well, I never want to read this again, so I'm going to finish it." I believe I only made it by keeping it at (emotional) arm's length, so I certainly didn't give it a proper reading.

...Reading books is not only about the way the book is written; it also has to be (more than I usually factor in?) about the reader. Maybe.

At least I can put this one behind me now. It actually did make me want to reread Middlesex.

Edit Nov 2017: Fuck not rating books. I hated this. It's literally written from the POV of the male gaze, and it still makes my skin crawl when I think about it. ( )

The ending was really inadequate. A very complex and compelling story with a cop out ending ( )

The prose in this novel is arresting; the story uncomfortable in so many ways; the symbolism well-placed; and the point of view fresh. The Virgin Suicides unfolds from a first-person plural viewpoint: a group of men collectively recalling the incidents that occurred in their upper middle class Detroit suburb during their teenage years, and against which they continued to measure experiences later in life. It is less a story about the suicides themselves and more about the boys’ adolescent fantasies that seemed to carry with them late into adulthood, still obsessed with what occurred in the period of a less than two years. The teenage boys here seem to have fallen under the spell of the Lisbon girls, who are not allowed to date and kept under the strict scrutiny of their parents. While the backdrop is the girls’ suicides over the course of a little more than a year, the real story is about teenage male desire, fantasizing, mythologizing, and objectifying the girls. ( )