Review: The Virgin Suicides (Jeffrey Eugenides)

I read this book years and years ago because I had a huge crush on the person who suggested I should read it.

I believe I still have his copy of the book and this weekend I re-read it because I really love it.

"None of us went to church, so we had a lot of time to watch them, the two
parents leached of color, like photographic negatives, and then the five
glittering daughters in their homemade dresses, all lace and rufffle, bursting
with their fructifying flesh."

I'm shite at writing reviews about anything I like (generally I'd really much prefer to tear them to shreds) but something about the language of the book really gets to me. Sure, it can be a little bit Stand by Me with the whole 'looking back at childhood' thing but it's one of those books that really straddles the gap between being a super simplistic story about highschool crushes and a house full of hot minxes and a look at a complex and sad little world.

"He tasted first the grease of her Chap Stick, then the sad Brussels-sprout
flavor of her last meal, and past that the dust of lost afternoons and the
salt of tear ducts. The peach schnapps faded away as he sampled the juices
of her inner organs, all slightly acidic with woe. "

I don't want to get all Michael Perrot and just rehash the storyline but I do really enjoy the fact that, as the book progresses, it's more and more obvious that the story's not really about the girls (the titular virgin suicides, though that's a total misnomer) but about the narrator and the other guys and the way they have been disappointed with life.

Incidently I think the movie did a fairly good job of translating some of the book onto screen but it certainly missed a lot of the poeticism of the writing and is, in my opinion anyway, it doesn't stand up that well alongside the book, although the soundtrack rocked.

"It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but
only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do
not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft
bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all
time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never
find the pieces to put them back together."

Highly recommended (and in my bookcase).