Book review: The Virgin Suicides

Book+review%3A+The+Virgin+Suicides

Ella Montano

“The Virgin Suicides” is a novel by Jeffrey Euginides about five adolescent sisters who all kill themselves over the course of a year. The book is set in a suburban neighborhood in the 1970s. It is narrated by a collective “we,” a group of neighborhood boys who are now lonely middle-aged men, who look back on the unsolvable mystery of the deaths of five sisters they once obsessed over. The way it is written lures you into the girls’ mysterious lives where they are stalked by the boys. You might think going into this book that it is about suicide, but that is not the case. This book is about isolation, sexuality and the male gaze.