Product Description

Haunting and tender, with brilliant flashes of humour, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES is the story of the disintegration of a captivating American family in 1970s suburban Michigan. The five Lisbon sisters are embalmed in the memories of the boys who worshipped them and who, twenty years on, recall their adolescence: the sisters' gauche but breathtaking appearance on the night of the homecoming dance; the brassière belonging to the beautiful, promiscuous Lux, draped over a crucifix on the wall; the records the boys played down the phone, trying desperately to penetrate the sisters' isolation; and the sultry, sleepy street across which they watched fragile lives disappear ...

Well-received at Cannes, THE VIRGIN SUICIDES movie, directed and written by Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis Ford) and starring an impressive cast - including Kathleen Turner, James Woods and Danny DeVito - is released in the UK in Spring 2000. Theatrical prospects are good for this timely and accomplished movie which will attract young as well as more mature viewers, and may generate controversy as well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4759 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Guardian
"the term "first novel" has connotations of apprenticeship that are out of place here"

Independent
"The Virgin Suicides is wonderfully original. It could prove to be the start of an important writing career."

Observer
"One of the finest novels in many years - a Catcher in the Rye for our time"

Customer Reviews

Leaves a bad taste....
This is a very powerful story, following the suicides of five girls from the same family, as seen through the eyes of a group of boys.

It is grim, emotional, and depressing at times, yet at others will make you smile at the touching observations that makes it seem all too real.

Its certainly a book that will stay with you for a while after you've read it - whether this is a good or bad thing, I don't know! Just make sure your next book afterwards has a happier ending!

In A League of Its Own
This is a book that is so thrilling, wonderful, gripping and fascinating that it belongs, not just in a league of its own, but in a world of its own. I never held quite "faith" in the second-person narrator until I read this novel; it feels slow to begin with but this is necessary in that it casts you in the rich, summer-like spell, almost a dreamlike trance, that means you are literally carried away. Apart from the heartbreaking and stunningly realistic ending, it never takes any particular "dramatic" twists: this could be dull or boring in less skilled hands than Eugenides', but it only serves to sustain the illusion that this is not fiction, or a novel, but life. Things do not happen fast in life. They can be a steady build-up of emotion and small things, that leads to a conclusion. I would compare it to To Kill A Mockingbird and Lolita in the strangely dreamy feeling that overtakes you while reading it, and spins you into the web of this remarkable tragedy. It is not a book I would recommend to everyone, but I loved it.

The Virgin Suicides
This was a very easy book to read - I found it hard to put down, particularly towards the end. It is very sad - the waste of the girls' lives and their isolation and desperation, but with glimpses of humour, albeit of a very dark nature. The author writes very well, with good use of description without going over the top.