The Virgin Suicides was incredible - Jeffrey Eugenides

In a normal happy American neighbourhood a group of boys look over to the other side of the street where you can find 5 beautiful sisters who are about to kill themselves. So, why would I even recommend this book to you when it is so filled with violence.

The five Lisbon girls are mysterious, beautiful and always move in a group, a group of boys observe then, obsess over them. Suddenly, Cecilia, the youngest, killsl herself and from that moment forward the Lisbon girls are not the same.

Young girls suffer in a world that is still run by men and the Virgin Suicides exactly shows that. Eugenides uses a very special narrator to tell the story of the Lisbon girls: a group of neighbourhood boys. It just shows a perfect example of the women are constantly sexualised and reduced to their beauty. When the young girls are obviously suffering, the boys keep telling us how beautiful they are, how mysterious they are, which boys they are with, what they are doing. They never help them, how they should’ve, for the reason they should’ve. They help them because they are seeing themselves like the savours of the beautiful neighbours, nothing more.

But you might still be asking the reason to read this depressing book. Well, let me elaborate a bit more. The writing is spectacularly beautiful. From the first sentence I was hooked. Eugenides flowers every single sentence with the most mesmerising words, making the girls even more mysterious. He also doesn’t try to dramatise the suicides themselves, he rather focuses on their lives before and how the boys envision them.

Finally, Eugenides is obviously a man but, he still has captured perfectly how it is to be a girl, living in a world where men still are seen a superior, in a world where men so often take advantage of girls and in a world where even in your own home, you can still feel extremely alone.