This is one of those ones that’s been knocking around on my Kindle for a while now. I’m not sure if it had the line ‘TIKTOK MADE ME BUY IT!’ in the title when I purchased it, but I ignored that and pressed on when I couldn’t sleep one night.
It’s good, obviously. I’d be interested to see Sofia Coppola’s adaptation of it and found I had Kirsten Dunst as the mental image of the Lisbon sisters as I was reading it. I was interested in the structure, in that it’s five long chapters, and also that it’s told be an anonymous collective of boys who observed the deaths. While I wouldn’t say I loved it, I certainly admired it. There were bits in there that made me think god, that’s really writing. On reflection, I’m not sure how I feel about that. But still. There’s a reason it makes the list of books you should read about teenage life. I didn’t really highlight much, apart from the one quote that everyone highlights:
Excerpt
The paramedics took Cecilia to Bon Secours Hospital on Kercheval and Maumee. In the emergency room Cecilia watched the attempt to save her life with an eerie detachment. Her yellow eyes didn’t blink, nor did she flinch when they stuck a needle in her arm. Dr. Armonson stitched up her wrist wounds. Within five minutes of the transfusion he declared her out of danger. Chucking her under her chin, he said, “What are you doing here, honey? You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets.”
And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was going to live: “Obviously, Doctor,” she said, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.” —p5
Buy ‘The Virgin Suicides’ by Jeffrey Eugenedis at bookshop.org