Review: The Virgin Suicides (the novel)

As a lover of all things Sofia Coppola, I've been a fan of The Virgin Suicides film for quite some time.  I think I always knew it was based on a book, but never actually made an effort to seek it out before reading Jeffrey Eugenides' other novel Middlesex (you can read my review of that  here).  In my opinion, both these books are masterpieces.  And that's not a word I use lightly.

The Virgin Suicides is narrated in the first person plural, told from the perspective of a group of boys who are obsessed with the family of teenage girls that lived in the neighbourhood they grew up in.  Now adults, they are still searching for the reason the girls decided to end their lives.  There is something disarming about this novel.  The prose is clever and mesmerizing, and the story itself eerily gothic, saturated with haunting, unforgettable images, and subtle, fitting allusions to Great Expectations (another one of my favourite novels).  All these attributes are demonstrated by the following excerpt.

"Chase Buell led the way, and as we descended...we traveled back to the day a year earlier when we had descended those same steps to attend the only party the Lisbon girls were ever allowed to throw.  By the time we reached bottom, we felt we'd literally travelled back in time.  For despite the inch of floodwater covering the floor, the room was just as we had left it: Cecilia's party had never been cleaned up.  The paper tablecloth, spotted with mice droppings, still covered the card table.  A brownish scum of punch lay caked in the cut-glass bowl, sprinkled with flies.  The sherbet had melted long ago, but a ladle still protruded from the gummy slit, and cups, gray with dust and cobwebs, remained neatly stacked in front...Above [the boys], in a pink dress, Bonnie looked clean and festive, like a pinata.  We gazed up at Bonnie, at her spindly legs in their white confirmation stockings...the soles of her wet shoes were embedded with bits of mica, shining and dripping".

Ok, I know that passage is way too long, but I hope you read it anyway.  I also hope it inspires you to read the book because it's fantastic.  Not into reading?  Check out Sofia Coppola's equally brilliant film.