A review by rainyreadss
The Virgin Suicides (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition) by Jeffrey Eugenides

dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The atmosphere is humid and dusty. Choking and coughing. A life begging to be lived. The stench of youth being stifled. What holds us together can be what makes us unravel too. The Lisbon sisters haunt the narrative as if they are a religious experience- angels, capable of leading the narrators to their rapture. Teenage girls loom as mythic muses, magic and ever fleeting. What can never be attained is often mistaken for love. Or maybe, love happens in spite of harsh realities. 

Narrated by the teenage boys, now older, it’s clear we never move on from some things. The biggest qualm for me is how the Lisbon sisters identities are intertwined, the narrators often admitting they cannot tell the sisters apart. It seems Lux and Cecilia are the only two individuals for most of the story, until the end when Mary gets a brief spotlight. There are moments where the sisters blending into a chorus make sense, but it’s the individual quirks and tastes of the girls that are scattered throughout that make them so endearing. 

Ultimately: a tale of teenagers, lust, confusion, escape routes, and tangled tragedies. The differences in our lives separate us as much as they bind us. Where does our story start in the story of another, if the narratives ever cross at all? How much can one soul (or in this case, 5) leave behind? 

“Even when all the unknowns become known, every detail accounted for, every witness interrogated, how much can we ever truly understand our own lives?”
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