Book 15

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Lisbon girls, a tragedy but for no particular reason other than they chose to be. The Virgin Suicides was an odd and yet compelling book about five sisters who over the period of one year all find unique and inexplainable ways to kill themselves.

Whether it be because their parents prevented them from experiencing the normal things every teenage girl should experience, or because they never found love, or because they felt no one understood them, they chose death over life.

I felt very little connection to this book. Odd, because I thought that it would for sure entrance me. The writing style was unique in that the narrator was a school boy (or boys) who observed the Lisbon girls from afar and wrote based on accounts conducted from interviews, but I felt nothing pulling at my heartstrings to continue to read on. Because there was so little development of the five Lisbon sisters, I never felt I knew their characters well or could distinguish the type of girls they were.

Still, I suppose that was the purpose of the book: to leave the reader trying to decipher for themselves the reason why five young and promising women would take their own lives, and perhaps lead is to question our own?

Fifteen down, ten to go.