The Virgin Suicides
After putting this book down, I immediately thought "how the hell am I going to write a review for this?" It is very hard hitting, personally, as a female. In a sentence, the book is about struggling girls and the pressures they are put under from society and their parents.Jeffery Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides is a very unconventional story. I think Eugenides made the book unique by giving it a different POV than the typical. The setting is an American suburb in the 70's. The story is told by high school boys who are obsessed with their a group of sisters that attend their school. We never really find out much about the boys as we read, they really only talk to the readers about the girls. The Lisbon sisters, Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux and Cecilia, have very strict parents who calculate their every move and don't really allow them to do much on their own; they do everything as a group.
The story starts with the youngest, Cecilia, found in the bathtub with slit wrists in a wedding dress. One of the boys admits to finding her as he snuck in the house. Cecilia survives but remains the talk of the town for a while. Some people decide that the girls are under so much pressure from their mother and father, others think she just wants attention. However, Cecilia's psychiatrist decides that it is a cry for help and tells the parents the girls need to socialise with boys their own age. This is how our boys telling the tale are invited to a party in the Lisbon basement and meet the girl they are constantly talking about and spying on. They have even accumulated some of their items they stole from them somehow. During the party, Cecilia asks to be excused and then successfully commits suicide. The rest of the story is more or less waiting for the boys to get to the part when all girls kill themselves.
After the girls go to a school dance, a couple of months after Cecilia's death. Lux disappears into the night with her charming date who supposedly had girls dropping at his feet but wanted Lux. She is seen by the neighbour returning home just around 1 am or so. After this, the girls are in lock down; they were not going to school or even leaving the house. The only time the boys see them is when Lux sneaks boys and has sex with them on the roof or when one of them going into the garden to catch a breath of air late at night. The girls are desperate, they try to communicate with the boys. They succeed by playing records on the phone by both ends.
The girls give in to the pressure, the only way they have to rebel from the societal system is through suicide; refusing to live and play by the rules that suffocate them so.
13 Reasons Why
UGH. How is this book popular? I am genuinely so confused.
The story is of a girl names Hannah Baker who has committed suicide but before doing so, she has recorded 13 tapes giving reasons, and blaming others, of why she is was going to kill herself. Our protagonist is the scapegoat Clay, who we learn throughout the book that Hannah had a crush on him. Hannah gives instructions that every name mentioned in the tapes is bound to listen to them as well as pass them down to these said names. Otherwise, as Hannah threatens, the tapes would published for all to hear. She has also included a map for those who would like to visit areas mentioned in the tapes.This book is a joke. Hear me out though. I read this because a friend of mine liked it so I thought I'd give it a go.
The thing with these types of books is that they romanticise suicide. They make it sound "cool". To be honest, they was no valid reason for Hannah to kill herself. And the fact that she went through the trouble of creating tapes and blaming others is just desperately crying for attention. I know that the previous book is about five girls killing themselves but that book had a very feminist, psychological message to come across. This book just made suicide seem like it's a trendy thing to do.
This book is just garbage. NO ONE READ IT!
