The Virgin Suicides Book Review

Your 3 am creepy pasta binge really has nothing on this book, so close that damn YouTube tab and listen. I am not saying that all creepy pastas are trash (kind of) as they have some good themes occasionally - unreliable narrators, the illumination of the creepy in the mundane, putting obscurity in a matter of fact way – but, Eugenides does it better, hell he’s the blue print. Published in 1993 this book melds my three favourite things together: the creepy, the tragic and the beautiful.

Eugenides’ title ‘The Virgin Suicides’ is not a futile attempt at some ‘I’m artistic and misunderstood’ metaphor about the loss of childish innocence, rather it’s quite literally a synopsis of the novel itself. The Virgin Suicides starts with the tragic death of the five Lisbon sisters who, in succession, take their own lives much to the surprise of the town. I use the word ‘surprise’ here very lightly, as even the paramedics seem chronically indifferent to the occurrence, having hauled the youngest child from the bathtub a few months prior. Our narrator, although feverishly curious, describes the girl’s deaths almost as if they were a predestined mystery, a tragic but necessary addition to the mythology of their tiny neighbourhood. The narrator is just a sketch to the reader, and with no name or validity to back him up, there’s an underlying sense of unreliability and unknowing (which is perfect to me, we all hate a likeable and obnoxiously moral narrator). He’s kind of a creep though, like most teenage boys with too many hormones and too much spare time. Yet his creepiness is

Words by Sienna Sulicich the virgin suicides by jeffrey eugenides

helpful to the narrative, similar to how a stalker would be pretty useful to the police in a missing persons case. The narrator and his gaggle of guys are infatuated with the untouchable and eccentric Lisbon sisters and this is only really heightened as the story eventuates and their cultish pack suicide is uncovered. Perverse, hilarious and abrasively realistic, The Virgin Suicides draws to surface all the big questions bubbling within adolescence and twists them into a fatal concoction for the Lisbon sisters.

The main question always raised about this novel is whether or not it romanticises the erratic mental state of the girls, which is a fair call considering Eugenides’ love of eerily pretty metaphors and the odd fascination of the neighbourhood goons. Yet the reality of the novel really hits home, with mental illness rearing its ugly head in the Lisbon house, as the girls are continuously tormented by intergenerational family trauma. The beautiful forefront is quickly ripped away as you begin to uncover what happens (or what may have happened) behind the closed doors of ordinary suburbia. The ‘romance’ of it is really in the neighbourhood’s perverse fascination with it all, as Eugenides exposes the innate human fascination with the tragic and our obsessive nature with everything obscure (think Paper Towns, but not garbage).

If you’re looking for something funny, this is your book. If you’re looking for something creepy, this is your book. If you’re looking for a sign to read anything at all today, this is it. To any creepy pasta lovers, Paper Towns fanatics or just lovers of anything in general, I seriously encourage you to read this book. I say encourage but this is a threat. Do it… or else? I don’t know, just do it okay!