The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

“The Virgin Suicides” is a novel written by Jeffrey Eugenides that was first published in 1993. The book is a fictional story set in the suburbs of Detroit in the 1970s and follows the lives of five teenage sisters, the Lisbon girls, who all commit suicide within a year.

The story is told through the eyes of a group of boys who were fascinated by the Lisbon girls and their mysterious lives. As the boys try to piece together the events leading up to the girls’ suicides, they uncover the secrets and complexities of the Lisbon family, as well as their own desires and obsessions.

The novel explores themes of adolescence, sexuality, identity, and the pressure to conform to societal norms. It also examines the effects of tragedy on a community and the way people cope with grief.

“The Virgin Suicides” has been praised for its lyrical and haunting prose, as well as its vivid and evocative portrayal of the suburbs in the 1970s. The book has been adapted into a film by Sofia Coppola in 1999 and has since become a cult classic. It is considered one of the defining novels of the 1990s and has earned Eugenides critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003 for his second novel, “Middlesex”.