The Virgin Suicides (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition): A Novel

Jeffrey Eugenides

Apr 1993 · Picador Modern Classics Book 2 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

The national bestseller from Jeffrey Eugenides, the Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author of Middlesex and The Marriage Plot

With a New Introduction by Emma Cline

Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.

First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters—beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys—commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family's fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death.

Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time.

Ratings and reviews

However, the ending to this sad story really got me. The way that the author described the characters, the neighborhood, and how everyone was impacted by the events that had transpired was amazing. Great read.

The description in this book is so beautiful and detailed. Normally, a tale about a household of suicidal girls who are locked up in their home wouldn't be all that exciting, but because of Eugenides's description it all comes to life and become an enthralling story.

I seen the film when I was in 8th grade and I loved it! I finally just read the book and the movie leaves out alot from the book but then again it doesnt. I just wish we would of gotten to get to know the sisters better. Its really an epic read.

About the author

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by FSG to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and France’s Prix Médicis. The Marriage Plot (FSG, 2011) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won both the Prix Fitzgerald and the Madame Figaro Literary Prize. Eugenides is a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton.