The Virgins: A Novel

by Pamela Erens

The Virgins is the story of Aviva Rossner and Seung Jung's erotic awakening at Auburn Academy re-imagined in richly detailed episodes by their classmate Bruce, a once-embittered voyeur, now repentant narrator, whose envy spurs the novel's tragic end.

It’s 1979, and Aviva Rossner and Seung Jung are notorious at Auburn Academy. They’re an unlikely pair at an elite East Coast boarding school (she’s Jewish; he’s Korean American) and hardly shy when it comes to their sexuality. Aviva is a formerly bookish girl looking for liberation from an unhappy childhood; Seung is an enthusiastic dabbler in drugs and a covert rebel against his demanding immigrant parents. In the minds of their titillated classmates—particularly that of Bruce Bennett-Jones—the couple lives in a realm of pure, indulgent pleasure. But, as is often the case, their fabled relationship is more complicated than it seems: despite their lust and urgency, their virginity remains intact, and as they struggle to understand each other, the relationship spirals into disaster. The Virgins is the story of Aviva and Seung’s descent into confusion and shame, as re-imagined in richly detailed episodes by their classmate Bruce, a once-embittered voyeur turned repentant narrator. With unflinching honesty and breathtaking prose, Pamela Erens brings a fresh voice to the tradition of the great boarding school novel.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction, Young Adult, Novels

287 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 6, 2013

About the author

Pamela's fifth book, MIDDLEMARCH AND THE IMPERFECT LIFE, out April 2022, is part of Ig Publishing's Bookmarked series on books that have shaped an author's writing and life.

Her previous book, her first for children, was published in June 2021. MATASHA (igKids) is for readers ages 10 to 14. The novel received a starred Kirkus review, and Meg Wolitzer in the New York Times called it "thoroughly winning.... The many pleasures of this novel include its empathy and poker-faced wit, and the charms of its main character."

Apart from these, Pamela has published three novels for adults. The most recent, ELEVEN HOURS, was brought out by Tin House Books (US) and Atlantic Books (UK) in 2016 and by Keter (Israel) in 2017.

ELEVEN HOURS was named a Best Book of 2016 by NPR, The New Yorker, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Entropy, and the Irish Independent. It received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and was lauded by publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to specialized literary sites such as Book Riot and The Millions.

Pamela's second novel, THE VIRGINS (Tin House, 2013), was a New York Times Book Review and Chicago Tribune Editors' Choice and was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, The New Republic, Library Journal and Salon. The novel was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award for the best book of fiction published in 2013.

A UK edition (John Murray) of THE VIRGINS appeared in 2014, and a German one C.H. Beck) in 2015.

In 2014, Tin House Books reissued Pamela's debut novel, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press, 2007), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.

Pamela is the recipient of 2015 fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Wesleyan Writers Conference, and a 2014 fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of literary, cultural, and mainstream publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, The Millions, The New York Times, Salon, Elle, Vogue, and O, the Oprah Magazine. For many years Pamela was an editor at Glamour magazine.

"Everyone who has the good fortune to pick up one of Erens' three novels becomes a fan. Whether writing about teenagers at boarding school (The Virgins), two mothers struggling together through labor (Eleven Hours), or a loner at the end of his tether (The Understory), Erens has a gift for making you want to spend time in her characters' company. Then you want to scout her other fans to discuss your good fortune of discovering her talents." — Reader's Digest, "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now" (2020)

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Review originally published on my blog, December 2013)

Set at Auburn, an American pre-college prepatory school in the late 1970s/early 1980s, The Virgins tells a familiar tale of first love and sexual awakening. The narrative, however, has an unusual structure: the story of the romance between students Aviva and Seung is told from the perspective of a third, largely uninvolved, character, Bruce. Bruce is privy only to occasional, out-of-context snippets of the couple's relationship, but around these slivers of knowledge he embroiders a complex, destructive, ultimately tragic tale. It is clear he is telling this story from a later, perhaps present-day, point of view and that these events are far behind him, but he contends that the fall-out from Aviva and Seung's involvement changed the lives of everyone who knew them.

At first it seems that Bruce could be described as a detached observer; at times he is so detached from the story he is telling that he seems not to exist at all. When I started writing this review, I couldn't even remember his name and had to look it up. However, the deeper you get into the book the more it becomes apparent that this is very much the way Bruce wants it, and that his account is very unreliable indeed. Before Aviva and Seung become a couple, Bruce develops an apparently random obsession with Aviva and seems thereafter to believe he has some possessive right over her. His story includes many intimate details of Aviva and Seung's relationship that he couldn't possibly know; nor does he claim anyone reliable has told him these things.

The characters in this book are an unlikeable lot, but it's difficult to know quite what to make of Aviva, Seung or anyone else since you only see any of them through Bruce's eyes. Although his narrative voice is eloquent and lyrical, Bruce himself is an unpleasant, sexist man who early in the story virtually attempts to rape Aviva. The fact that he tells the story as an older man only adds to the uneasiness, since he still seems so obsessed with these events, things that happened when he was very young. Seung is bland - really he's a cipher, he could be anyone - and it doesn't feel as though the reader ever really gets to understand him. As for Aviva herself, I was never quite sure whether I actually disliked her or whether her character was just impossibly unrealistic. It seemed like she was supposed to be an untouchably perfect girl who everyone desired but, at the same time, also a weirdo and a misfit with countless issues - but was this the author's intention, or Bruce's? Of course Bruce would want to find some way to bring Aviva down, since he appears to simultaneously lust after her, idolise her and hate her, and of course he'd want Seung to seem dull.

Much of Bruce's story revolves around what he believes to be Aviva and Seung's sexual exhibitionism, and he asserts that they are seen this way by everyone, but again this is an unreliable view and one that seems unlikely to be true. They're in a boarding school full of male and female students between the ages of 14 and 17 - it seems highly unlikely they would be a) the only students in a committed relationship, b) the only students 'visibly' having sex and c) regarded by other students of their age as being deviants of some kind for 'flaunting' their relationship. It says a lot about the extent of Bruce's jealousy that he refers to Aviva as 'the great Auburn slut' - she is only ever seen with one boy! If anything I'd have thought it would be considered quite old-fashioned and sweet that Aviva and Seung were so devoted to one another. But of course, it would also be likely to provoke a lot of envy among students who weren't so lucky, and it's this, or at least this in Bruce's case, that is the real underlying linchpin of the plot.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Erens writes beautifully and the whole concept is so interesting - I am a big fan of stories that prompt you to wonder how much of the story is real and how much is imagined. I'd be interested to know why a female writer would choose to tell a story like this from the perspective of such a horrible male character (and, I admit, I would probably have judged the book still more harshly if the author had been a man). And, at least, Bruce's unreliability means it's perfectly possible the final event didn't actually happen - I certainly HOPE it didn't, and I choose to believe it didn't. The fact that we never really discover what became of Bruce afterwards is a little frustrating, but adds to the sinister and untrustworthy feel of the whole thing.

I've said this before but I always feel the need to make the point anyway: a contemptible character does not make a bad book - in fact the opposite can sometimes be the case, especially when combined with the conceit of the unreliable narrator - but when you have a character who is neither likeable, nor entertaining, nor in any way fascinating, it's hard to want to spend any time in their company. If Bruce was a real person I would hide in cupboards to avoid him. Having to go back, repeatedly, to read his story elicited a similar feeling: his attitude towards women in general, Aviva in particular, sex and relationships left a bad taste in my mouth. The major strong point of this book is the powerful, evocative style, yet that was often lost in Bruce's unpleasantness, and I couldn't help but think it was wasted on him. Still, The Virgins is a powerful and memorable narrative.

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ominous and sensual and very gripping. Very reminiscent of Salter and the author includes a clever nod to him within the novel.

[Dannii Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I love the online book community, I find it can restrict the books I read and purchase. I too often find myself checking out reviews or disallowing myself to delve into books that are not on my tbr. Whilst on holidays in the book town of Hay-on-Wye I scrapped all of that and spent two glorious days buying and reading exactly just what appealed to me!

One such title was The Virgins, an adult, historical fiction, focusing on a group of adolescents, in the 1970s, and their pre-internet struggle to understand the new, adult world they are so close to entering. I read it, over the weekend I was there and found myself a new favourite within its pages.

I found the way it explored sexual dynamics and the individual's response to their adolescence to be illuminating in nature and yet also sensitive to the age of the characters it was referring to.

[Stacia (the 2010 club) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The all-too-brief moments of storytelling genius which stirred my curiosity were not enough to keep me from the realization that I did not like the main characters which the story revolved around.

Maybe I'm too young to appreciate this coming-of-age tale in the the 1970's. Oh wait; scratch that. I love the idea of mid-to-late century boarding school stories. In fact, I've been trying to seek out anything from this category which looks appealing. It's really too bad that when I find a rare book of this type which shows promise, (see also : The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls) it hasn't been working for me. Sadly, I found more to like (as well as more quotable moments) in Yonahlossee, and so I had to rate this book slightly lower.

One thing which did strangely appeal was the creepy narrator, although I think the author should have gone all-in with the commitment to showcasing his voice. There were points where the voice would switch to a generic third person narrative, and I think the book would have been better served if Bruce's presence had been this tingle on the back of my neck the entire time.

In the end, I only had a mild fascination about where things went wrong with Aviva and Seung. The last couple of chapters served as nothing more than a vehicle to make me think oh...okay, so that's how it is.

One minor observance : what is it with some literary fiction and awkward, unappealing sexual situations? I do appreciate the effort to maintain some sort of realistic version of how things happen. However, I hate reading sentences such as his briefs fill again and again with sticky ejaculate. Some things are probably better left out, accuracy or not.

The writing was strong - the emotional pull was not. If you enjoy literary fiction, I'd suggest looking at some other reviews first before discounting the read. There seems to be quite a bit of praise for this story from the general public. The problem could have squarely been with me.

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you were to propel On Chesil Beach forward to 1979 and transplant it across the Atlantic to a prestigious boarding school on the East Coast this is the book you’d end up with.

It is the story of new arrival to the school Aviva and her intense love affair with fellow student Seung. She’s Jewish, he’s Korean though not much is made of that beyond Seung’s mother being a cliché, outwardly polite and welcoming to Aviva while calling her all manner of insults in Korean to the rest of the family. Are they really as an unlikely couple as the author wants us to believe? Not really, he’s a swim star, doing well academically, one of the ‘prefects’ (I can’t remember the term used in the book) so is high cache and she is new and wears her sexuality openly with her choice of clothes and jewellery and draws the attention of all the male students.

The story is narrated by a peripheral character in their lives who early on becomes infatuated with Aviva culminating in his attempted rape of her and spends the rest of the book jerking off to how it could have gone. Subsequently, much of the book is spent describing the physicality of Seung and Aviva’s relationship which considering their ages felt prurient and passed on that unease to the reader – probably intentionally so. Call me a prude but I found the couple annoying in this respect and I was surprised that none of the friends ever called out these constant PDAs and even helped them sneak into each other’s rooms. All very different from my time at school where they would have been met with jeers and the like– but I am an uptight, repressed English so …

And that’s it for the plot – apart from the big event at the end which has been heralded from the first few pages and a few mentions of divorce and eating disorders, neither of which are explored in any depth. All characters – even the main ones are sketchy – and the school is a 2d backdrop rather than integral to the story. Again this may be an intentional choice emphasising that with infatuation comes a narrowing of vision, of reduced engagement with the world outside the beloved but it doesn’t make for great reading.

If you’ve read Chesil Beach you can guess what the big denouement is and if you haven’t I’m sure Bill Clinton will be able to inform you though I don’t know why it’s worthy of interest beyond the couple involved.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Irving is among the many big names who have praised Pamela Erens’s latest, an emotionally complex and darkly gripping love story set among teenagers at an exclusive New England boarding school.

As the novel opens in 1979, sixteen-year-old Aviva Rossner has just made her way from Chicago to New Hampshire to begin her junior year at Auburn Academy. Her parents are getting a divorce, and her sense of confusion and dislocation prompts her to start changing her image. No longer just some mousy Jewish girl, she picks up a reputation as ‘easy,’ especially when she starts hanging around with Seung Jung. Seung is the son of very demanding Korean parents, and although he is popular at school and a successful swimmer, he constantly struggles to meet their expectations.

It soon becomes clear that Aviva and Seung’s is an ill-fated, Romeo and Juliet kind of love. All their classmates assume they’re having sex all the time, but that isn’t true. Though these two are desperate to lose their virginity to each other, it never quite seems to happen for them.

Perhaps what is most unique about the novel is that it is not written from Aviva or Seung’s perspective, or told by a third-person omniscient narrator. In fact, it is narrated in the first person by Bruce Bennett-Jones, an amateur dramatics enthusiast who has been obsessed with Aviva since he kissed her on the day she arrived at Auburn. The first line of the novel suggests that it might be, like Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, a case of the intriguing first-person plural: “We sit on the benches and watch the buses unload.” Maybe this will be, like Eugenides’s novel, a collective, retrospective look at doomed teenagers, I thought.

But as the first chapter continues, readers learn that this is really Bruce’s story, and he is in careful control. It is impossible to forget that this is a voyeur’s tale, pieced together from what little Bruce has observed and heard. “Let me re-create her journey,” he says coyly before recounting Aviva’s long trip out to Auburn. Later he sets up her first encounter with Seung by proposing “They meet in music theory. Let’s say that. [...] I’m convinced that she made the first move.”

Reminders of how this narrative has been deliberately constructed, and based on limited evidence, are frequent. Although Bruce is an entirely unreliable narrator, his account is all we have, and Erens’s writing is so good that it’s usually possible to overlook the framework and just get lost in the story, accepting it all at face value.

What is more difficult to accept, however, is that Bruce would be privy to the details of Aviva and Seung’s love life – described here in surprisingly explicit, erotic language. I found myself feeling uncomfortable every time I remembered these characters are only 16 or 17 years old. They may struggle with sex itself, but the tender intimacy between them is somewhat shocking. Again, though, remember that this is all Bruce’s fantasy, overlaid on his acquaintances to suit his own purposes: that creepy edge of manipulation and almost pornographic imagining can be unnerving.

As the students plan their future after Auburn and deal with family breakups and romantic disillusionment, Bruce has one last chance to see if he can do more than just record events. Might he be able to change the course of the future for Aviva and Seung?

The Virgins doesn’t shy away from some unpleasant realities. It may be about teenagers, but I sense that it’s not really geared towards YA readers. The characters may seem immature at times, but they are dealing with tough issues like sexual dysfunction, drug abuse, domestic violence, and mental illness. (In this very melancholy book, I was most affected by the scene when Bruce’s friend Detweiler has a nervous breakdown and simply cannot face stepping outside the door of his dorm room.) I felt sad, even guilty, for these characters – they’re far too young to be faced with such experiences.

Along with The Virgin Suicides (to which, with the similar title, time period, and setup, it must be at least a semi-conscious homage), The Virgins reminded me strongly of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Benjamin Wood’s The Bellwether Revivals. All of these campus novels bear more than a slight air of menace. There is also a taste of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, a lighter, more gossipy boarding school novel that still touches on deep emotional issues.

I’m not sure I completely enjoyed The Virgins – it was a bit too creepy and graphic for me to be able to say I actually liked it – but I admired Erens’s narrative strategy and her hard-hitting story of angsty teenage romance.

(This review originally appeared at Bookkaholic.)

[Nancy Freund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I actually uploaded a video review to YouTube about this one and that's the single most important word I used: wow. In that review I focused primarily on Erens' handling of a "participating omniscient narrator" which surely has a literary term I've forgotten, but she uses the character of Bruce Bennett-Jones beautifully, weaving him into the actual plot-line such that he fully owns his omniscience and his role in the story of the two main characters he is observing, Seung and Aviva. I'd say her use of this type of narration even surpasses James Salter's version of it in A Sport and a Pastime, and maybe even F. Scott Fitzgerald's use of it in The Great Gatsby.

But the wow -- and I didn't have time to get into this in my YouTube review -- is inspired by so much more. The complicated interactions of these characters, the lack of any true and trustworthy authority figures in the school (and broader) communities, and the use of drugs and drinking to flimsily bond people as false friends are all terribly sad.

There's a scene with Bennett-Jones listening to his mother's drunken fall in their apartment that is among the single most moving paragraphs I've ever read. The study of Aviva as a character alone is a beautiful, thoughtful example of literary fiction at its best. She is cold -- yes. She's needy. She's a victim and a victimizer... but the fine balance she walks is the stuff of only the very best fiction. Seung too, is nuanced and stunning -- in his complicated roles within his boarding school community, with his Korean-American family (each member of this family), with his friends from grade school, his high school friends, and ultimately, with Aviva. Their story -- as John Irving says in his blurb -- is truly horrible, and no reviewer should give it away.

So I won't. But John Irving calls this novel flawlessly executed, and I agree. If you dive in with a giant question mark, like why would a grown woman want to read about a bunch of boarding school kids' sexual shenanigans, for goodness sake, read on. What this novel offers is substantial and deep. And worth every beautifully-written page you'll experience till you get to that ending Mr. Irving hopes you'll discover on your own.

[Jood · Rating 1 out of 5]

Auburn Academy, in 1979 - 80, an elite boarding school for spoilt rich kids, is the setting for this novel which concerns the fumblings and gropings of two teenagers obsessed with themselves and each other.

Aviva, a self-absorbed and insecure Jewish girl, seeks attention by wearing ostentatious gold jewellery and dressing differently from her peers; she believes if she is not noticed she will just fade away. Seung, the number two Korean son, raised to be honourable, obedient and studious is a "proctor" or mentor to younger students. His parents disapprove of this Jewish white girl. Her divorced parents couldn't care less. Aviva and Seung, make no attempt to conceal their attraction, in fact, they seem to take delight in flaunting it, and for some reason the rest of the students seem fascinated, even in awe of it. Despite this infatuation with each other there doesn't seem to be a shared love; Seung loves Aviva, but she seems interested only in losing her virginity, in the belief this will magically make her "properly" loved.

The narrator of the unfolding events is Bruce Bennett-Jones; something of a voyeur, he fantasises about a possible relationship with Aviva. She, however, is disinterested; her obsession with Seung is all encompassing. Their circle of friends, misfits all, watch this relationship believing it to be one of everlasting and pure passion, and sex of course.

None of the characters is likeable; I could not identify or sympathise with any of them. There is very little conversation between characters, so the reader does not get to know them; the narrative is cool and detached and doesn't allow the reader to become involved with the story. Although this is a slim paperback of some 280 pages I actually found it quite heavy going; many passages, I feel, are irrelevant. Why do we need to know about Bruce's family background? It has no bearing on the story. Most of the chapters are quite short, but a few are long and rambling. Although written very well, it seemed to take such a long time to get where it was going, and for me was quite boring; I couldn't help thinking, when I finally got to the end: Well, so what?

This has been described as "chilling", but I found nothing chilling or haunting about it. So, John Irving read and seemingly enjoyed it, even suggesting future reviewers not give the game away - all of which suggests this is far more intriguing than it actually is. I have been left wondering why the author saw fit to set it in a specific time period - it could have been left without any particular time period. It's as though the author wanted this to be much bigger than it actually is - which, for me, is a disappointing bit of, well, nothing really.

I know I'm sticking my neck out with this one, but I really didn't enjoy it and found it quite a chore to get through.

Thanks to Amazon for a free copy to review.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can I begin to say how I LOVE THIS BOOK: Masterfully written, lush searing prose, a brilliant study in structure and point of view, this is not another boarding school tale but something else- far more urgent, complex, universal. The book is so taut it does not carry a single word of fat, making it impossible to put down, the tension propelling the story to the final stirring page- and leaving the reader with so much to think about long after. An essential, extraordinary novel.

[Debbie Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not another boarding school book. No PREP. It is far more accomplished, far deeper than that.
You know when you read Pamela Erens, you are going to get energetic writing, flawless language… and more. This is a sophisticated look at sexuality, coming of age and boarding life. It is also an excellent reflection upon just what intimacy is, and what interferes with it. And how perception of others and ourselves impacts our choices in life changing ways.
I love how bold this writer is. I really liked The Understory too. Erens takes chances on narration. She takes on male point of view, a very flawed male, and executes it wondefully. She is simply a great talent and Tin House was fortunate to have found her.(less)

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boarding-schools do work wonderfully as cozies, both in art and in real life. The setting and cast are limited, so whatever goes on is going to be intensified. I wrote in some tenth-grade essay that my prep school—the same one Erens’s Auburn Academy is based on—took the general ecstasies and woes of adolescence and magnified them almost beyond bearing. I also believed, and still believe, that because we were away from home, the prep school environment, in ways that may have been paradoxically stunting, accelerated us into adulthood.

Fertile ground for a novelist, as many fine writers have established.

You can always tell when someone who writes a novel or a screenplay set in a boarding school didn’t go there. They usually just take public school social hierarchies, dump in a bunch of money, and drape them in ivy. That’s not how it was. If anything, prep schools are Spartan places, and it can be hard to tell who has the most money. Many students have none, because these places have such huge endowments they can afford to admit regardless of need. Today, you can attend Phillips Exeter Academy free if your parents make less than $70K per year—if you can get in. At a school that selects for academic achievement, cool can be determined in a variety of ways. In the late 70s and early 80s at Phillips Exeter, hardly anyone went to football games, kids wore school sweatshirts turned inside out, and a lot of the typical jock and pretty-girl groups were not recognized as cool by the rest of the student body. This was very disorienting to kids coming from more traditional environments, no doubt.

If you open The Virgins looking for a mean-girls type story in which kids haze other kids, or in which insiders gang up on outsiders in conventional ways, you’ll either be disappointed or refreshed. Athletic and academic competition don’t figure much in this book, which is as I remember. Competition steeped the atmosphere, but it wasn’t for grades, not then. It was to be smart, to be witty at the dining room table and in the buttrooms. It was, of course, to be cool, as it ever is among adolescents and many adults, but as defined in perhaps more interesting ways. It was for attention, because, perhaps, many of these kids weren’t getting enough, despite all their gifts, from their families, or from their teachers, who had seen it all before.

The narrator of this book, often called vile by readers and reviewers, Bruce Bennett-Jones, needs quite a bit of attention. He has a girlfriend, but he wants a cooler one. He has friends, but he doesn’t connect well with them, a pathology common among teenagers everywhere. He’s bright, but not really bright enough, perhaps, to have been admitted to Auburn Academy under the standards that are changing before his eyes. He’s a legacy student, whose father and grandfather have attended the school, rather than someone who has got in on the merit of his high grades and scores, and his amazing science projects, or the demonstration of outstanding character. He is, he says, a member of the “landed gentry,” going back to the earliest days of America. Of course, someone less needy, more secure of his place, would never have needed to say that. No real WASP would say “landed gentry.”

BBJ’s place at the fringe of the establishment is being usurped by a new wave of outsiders, kids admitted on the basis of their grades and scores, rather than for their pedigrees. “THEM.” These high-achieiving kids include Jews, Asians, blacks, girls, etc. (He seems less concerned about the blacks, who keep to themselves at the Academy and aren’t as much of a social threat. And it's hard to be upset about the girls.) His response: counterattack. One Jewish girl in particular, Aviva, is hot. He might accomplish several goals if he could conquer her. He’d have a cooler girlfriend than the lumpish one he has, he’d impress his friends with his ruthlessness; he’d get laid, because so far he hasn’t, not even with his current girlfriend, and in any school it’s uncool not to be laid. To the extent that sex represents, as BBJ claims, one’s ideal self to a kid striving to become an adult, Aviva seems to have enough going on that he would also improve, well, his Bruce-ness, somehow, if only he could have her first.

Erens in The Virgins is concerned, it initially seems, with coming-of-age, specifically with rebellion as a certain post-hippie generation expressed it through sex and drugs. However, she's done something especially far-reaching in how she structured the book and in her choice of narrator. The first full length review I saw, by Leigh Stein in the LA Times, was mixed on this choice. On the one hand she compared the book to Shakespeare, which she could not have done without BBJ. On the other, she wished Aviva could have been more "at the helm of her own story."

Yes. How we all might wish this for Aviva, just as we might all have wished to have been at the helms of our own stories as teens. BBJ isn’t at the helm of his story, either. He’s not, because he’s not at the center of his own social world, and he can’t insinuate himself into the drama between Aviva and her Korean boyfriend, Seung. It’s not just that this drama is all about sex, but that it excludes him totally. And not just excludes him, but all of Auburn Academy and its moldering rules. The rules that used to be centered on its Old Boys’ networks, its East-Coast Establishment, which Aviva, a Jewish girl from Chicago, knows nothing about. She’s come from elsewhere and can, if her father decides to stop paying her tuition, or if she’s expelled for her rule-breaking, or if she decides to go to college outside the Ivy League, simply disappear elsewhere. There is, apparently, unimaginably, an elsewhere. When Aviva first arrives at the school, BBJ helps her carry her luggage to her dorm. “I’m on the second floor,” she says, without a thought for the fact that it’s completely illegal—nearly a hanging offense—for him to climb the stairs of a girls’ dorm. Her expectation that he’ll follow her is so complete that he does. Rules? They don’t occur to her. She is outside them from the start.

But Auburn is built on rules, they’re mixed into the mortar. Aviva isn’t going to get away with breaking them whether she recognizes them or not, and neither is Seung. BBJ may not be the enforcer, but he knows these two kids will fall, and he is only waiting to see, to collect the spoils.

Aviva’s boyfriend comes from a rule-bound culture, but he himself is a free spirit. This connects the couple, or so BBJ assumes. He can’t figure either of them out, really. Aviva is mysterious to him, but Seung he knows better; they came from the same public school before attending Auburn. What mystifies him about Seung is what Aviva sees in the boy. If Seung comes across as a bit flatter, I think it's because BBJ can't bear to see him fully fleshed out. Can't bear to see him with Aviva's loving eyes, for several reasons, the ending being only one.

Coming back to the comment about Aviva at the helm of her own story—well, that’s just the thing. It’s not her story. It’s BBJ’s story. Aviva may well be the most vivid character, but that’s because he’s most interested in her. Is BBJ an unreliable narrator? Of course he is and who cares? He has to be unreliable, I think. For one thing, he comes of age during the postmodern period, is educated in literature during that era, and therefore knows as we all know that there is no such thing as a reliable narrator. He says so himself, when he makes reference to some of the discussions that go on in English class. I don't think that even as we move beyond postmodernism as a literary approach we can ever return to a reliable narrator. They have never existed and cannot. No one can know the whole story, and even with the best intentions they must lie. I have no idea if this is what Erens thinks, but I believe this is so fundamental to literature and even the ground of existence now that it is hardly worth discussing whether a narrator is reliable or not.

Besides. Do you remember your high school experience without fail?

BBJ isn't concerned with telling us an accurate story. He tells you he's structuring this story. He tells you he's inventing things, even inventing characters. He says he's inventing Seung and this is the least he can do for him. He mentions penance. To whom? Aviva, it seems, but he doesn't appear to be in touch with her. He says he's never found the right listener. So who is he talking to?

After some thought—and I love that this book required this thought of me—I decided to think of this narrator as summoning the materials for a play. For BBJ, this story is an act of creation. In school he belonged to the drama club and he’s stayed in the theatre throughout his professional life. Reviewers have compared him to Iago, which is fun to think about, but I don’t think he is as despicable as that, and neither is he as capable of intimacy—he doesn’t get as close to Seung to betray him as deeply as Iago does Othello. Nonetheless, imagine him as a Shakespearian figure who comes onstage to deliver a monologue and then departs while the curtain peels back to reveal some action. Then the narrator returns, just when you had immersed yourself in the scene, to remind you that he is the one who is telling this story. Maybe you really did see what you just watched, but if you did it was only through his x-ray eyes.

Is this not interesting? I think this narrative “trick” adds indescribable dimension to the story. Straight narration—Aviva at the helm, say, talking about trying to have sex with Seung, or some omni third-person voice—IMO would not be as compelling. It would not leave us with as much to think about afterwards. It would just be another story about teenagers trying to figure everything out.

Despite having been an asshole as a teenager (and were you always nice? be honest; be as honest as he is, and then reconsider whether he is so vile, now at 50, telling this story), BBJ is extremely sensitive at times. His x-ray vision does seem kind of reliable, which is why we feel shell-shocked when the curtain drops and we have to listen to the monologue again, though we are soon enough caught up in that voice too. It’s possible that he imagines what goes on between Aviva and Seung as well as anyone ever could. If you had these same pieces of information (I wonder if this will become one of those cult novels where people go around making lists of which pieces of information are “real” and which are “only” in BBJ’s head?), you might not do half as well at divining how it was that Aviva (we don’t actually know about Seung—or do we? Call in the cultists!) remained a virgin until that final, awful encounter with BBJ.

Because this is BBJ’s work of art, then, we have no idea of his agenda. IE, normally, if we were concerned with an unreliable narrator, we'd be looking for clues as to what *really* happened. And what was he trying to do? Set the record straight? What record? Expiate his sins? Etc. We don't have any of that to do with, no reality to compare to, nothing creeping in at the corners of the narrative, so instead, we ought just to look at BBJ's narrative itself and say, okay, here's a guy who's spent his life in the theatre and this is a play or something close, and what is it that he wants to say to the world with it?

1) Sex is wild magic. It is the key to ourselves and often destroys us. There aren’t counterexamples creeping in at the edge BBJ’s narrative, so it’s possible this is what Erens thinks as well.
2) Opportunities for kindness existed even in a place like Auburn and therefore might have been woven in personalities that made their way into adulthood. Aviva, as observed and imagined by BBJ, manifested both wildness and kindness. BBJ regrets his unkindness. He loved her. Aviva’s leaving the school was a loss for the school, even if it came after he was graduated. It made the world the school was making, and therefore the kind of world those kids grew up into, less kind and true. He regrets that. He regrets his part in that. BBJ is not as vile as some have said. Perhaps some of his sex, however fucked up, with Aviva, helped him become a better self. ☺ At least his obsession with her might have.
3) Society may be going through or may have gone through a period that was deeper than a rebellion, a reformation in which outsiders moved into the core, challenging rulesets, and after which people on both the inside and outside have not really adjusted. This mating of inside and outside is painful and incomplete and damaging and is not being handled well as yet, but has potential. Not sure about this.
4) He regrets his part in what happened to Seung, but this seems to come more from out of a basic sense of right and wrong, which he does not entirely lack.
5) There’s some interesting stuff in this book about art and artifice. Aviva artistically creates herself. HerSELF. BBJ, who becomes a stage director, goes on to deal with people who are constantly taken up with artifice. They never come of age, those people. Does he?
6) The sadism of artistic creation—as he develops his story and begins to re-create what happened with Aviva and Seung, he remarks that there’s something sadistic about being the one to say what happened, about moving these people around on the page. Yes, there is. What happened was bad enough, and now here he is, again.
7) And yet… haven’t he and Erens made something beautiful?

And then there is yet the next layer, the one where Erens is the author and selecting this narrator, these eyes through which to view Aviva and Seung. Male, WASP, so very wounded and stunted in their own way, those eyes.

Well, I could go on and on. I can’t remember when I finished this book, but well over a month ago. I think about it a lot and I believe it won’t leave my imagination easily. Erens’s writing has been compared to Shakespeare's and Salter's and Knowles's. I suppose some will think of Tartt as well. I also thought of Stegner. I recommend that readers also look at her first novel, The Understory. Something spectacular is going on here.

I’m grateful for and inspired by the risks she takes.



PS: In case it's necessary to say this, I went to Exeter with Pamela Erens and we have remained friends since. We frequently discuss matters related to writing and the writing life but we don't share our actual writing much, and I did not see this book in manuscript, although I was curious and I wished I had. We've never talked about this book; I don't always give my friends five or even four stars.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So vivid and sensory that you can practically smell the pungent pot smoke, feel the stirring of adolescent lust, hear the Devo playing on some dorm room stereo set…

[Sophfronia Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I review The Virgins in the new issue of Gently Read Literature (http://gentlyread.wordpress.com/2013/...), here's a sample. And if you like it, please subscribe and check out the entire issue:

"Pamela Erens’s novel The Virgins also takes place at a boarding school, Auburn Academy, and she casts it with a number of characters with whom a reader might identify. I will admit, though, my experience with A Separate Peace was working on me as I read it. Even before we learn the name of Bruce Bennett-Jones, his first person description of the novel’s opening scene of hanging out with his friends, claiming the entitlement of being seniors at last, and sizing up the new arrivals for potential girlfriends despite already having one, had me wary of him from the start. I wondered which poor glorious personality would inspire his envy and have to pay for it by the end of the book. He meets the object of his obsession quickly: Aviva Rossner, a Jewish girl who wears her sexuality as easily as her gold chains and plunging angora sweaters. But within a few pages she spurns Bennett-Jones in favor of Seung Jung, a Korean-American senior on the swim team. Together Aviva and Seung develop such heated habits of public displays of affection that they become notorious at Auburn and a major thorn of bitterness in Bennett-Jones’s side.

Like A Separate Peace, The Virgins does shape up to be a potential classic, but not for the villainy of Bruce Bennett-Jones. In this engaging story of blossoming sexuality Erens has created the perfect incubator in which we can examine the various, troublesome ways teens navigate the new territory of their bodies. I believe it has the ability to draw in readers old and young, including my friend’s teenage son, now and possibly in generations to come. That may seem odd since the book is set in 1979, but that is the beauty of it. The novel can focus on the base essence of teenage sexuality without the distractions and complications that come of today’s texting, Facebook bullying, and an overall nonchalance about sex. How much, for instance, would Bennett-Jones daydream about his desire for Aviva and what’s under her sweaters if he can turn on a cellphone and find a picture of her naked breasts that she had tried to text to her boyfriend but ended up in the phones of the entire student body? We would have a totally different story.

Also a classic does more than tell a good story. A classic is usually written in a way that invites us to keep coming back to unpeel it, layer by layer, with subsequent readings. But in order for us to do that the author must build the layers into the book in the first place. The Virgins demonstrates this kind of careful, thoughtful, painstaking writing in the way Erens plays with point of view, develops her characters with a keen eye, and, of course the way she writes about sex. "

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned about this novel from one of the Best Books of 2013 lists, published in The Daily Beast or some other Huffington Post. I spotted it among some other books that I knew, and it caught my eye - a novel set in an elite boarding school at the end of the 70's, with a bizarre love triangle - two students pursue the same girl, but only one wins her affection - the other becomes the narrator of The Virgins, Pamela Erens's second novel.

Bruce Bennett-Jones, the said narrator, is decidedly an unpleasant character - at the beginning of the book he is in a relationship, but it doesn't stop him from becoming infatuated with the new student, Aviva Rossner. He slowly begins to pursue her, with a mixture of both obsession and shyness, which culminates in an act which puts quite literally nukes any bridges that might have developed between them. Aviva then becomes involved with Seung Jung, an acquaintance of Bruce, leaving the latter to observe their relationship from a distance.

As a narrator, Bruce is not only unlikable, but also unreliable - much of the descriptions of the relationship consists of his ideas about it, as he describes events and situations which he couldn't have witnessed, including their intimate moments. Perhaps it is then a conscious choice of style - to be attributed to a sad and jealous person of at best a questionable character - which has Erens pop up sentences like "Just as she will not lie with her mouth, he is unable to lie with his cock"? This sounds like an excerpt from a trashy romance novel, and not a book of supposed literary value (whatever that might mean).

Each character is of a different ethnicity, yet nothing is really done with this fact. Aviva is a shy Jewish girl, wanting to prove herself, while Seung's ethnicity gives him stereotypical Asian Parents who disapprove of his choice of a girlfriend and quite literally tell him to study harder and get to a good college. Really? Again, it might be Erens's conscious choice to show Bruce's bigotry (he is, after all, the narrator), but it still felt lazy and largely uninteresting.

In the end, instead of reading one of the better novels of 2013 I read a book towards which I felt little emotional attachment and had little curiosity about. I finished it but mostly out of obligation, as I wasn't enlightened, touched or moved in any way. Bruce Bennet-Jones is no Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, and the story he tells can be easily skipped.

[Stacey D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a beautifully written and deeply satisfying story. There were times that The Virgins reminded me of Prep and similar coming-of-age stories that, though reflective, don't give off too much of a sentimental vibe. The story is shared in an interesting way: through a third party, Bruce, who couldn't possibly have known the initimate goings on of main characters Aviva and Seung at Auburn Academy, a high school boarding school in New Hampshire. Even so, this unreliable narrator comes across as brutally honest and largely (but not totally) unlikeable. Great characters, teenage angst and heartbreaking young love made this a quick, but unforgetable read. Set in 1979-1980, I could almost hear the soft strains of The Smashing Pumpkins' 1979 - what else? - playing in the background.

[Avital · Rating 5 out of 5]

Several months after reading it, it still holds up as one of the books that most impressed me this year. The book has been written patiently, you can feel that, and there's something solid, rather muscular about its strength.
The choices are very interesting. I read a review in the NYT before reading it and I gathered that the narrator is a nasty creature, but he is so layered, that he is far from incarnating evil. His story made me feel for him.
I compared the ambiance to my own situation during my adolescence in the 70’s. Israel as a whole was a naive place at the time. Very few people around me experienced with drugs or alcohol and full sexual intercourse was rare enough. It sounds like history and it is-nowadays things are different. So I deeply enjoyed entering the lives in the book, feeling and understanding their sexual and emotional journeys.

(SPOILER)
That the narrator withdrew from Aviva when he could finally have sex with her was unsettling and surprising at the same time. It is definitely a turning point in the narrative that determines Aviva’s future. This is when you realize that the book is her chance of emotional survival. Very smart!

[Ends of the Word · Rating 3 out of 5]

A coming-of-age novel set in an East Coast college/boarding-school in the late 70s; teenagers getting to grips with adulthood and sexuality; a striking girl who is every male student's object of desire; a love story which can only lead to tragedy; an unreliable narrator who, years after the events described, tries to make sense of them but is so clearly driven by conflicting emotions (nostalgia, guilt, self-pity) that we can never be sure whether or not he is telling the truth...

So far, so ordinary.

What makes this novel worth reading is the way in which Pamela Erens combines (hyper)realism with a poetic language which bathes the most mundane of details in a warm glow, gradually fuelling the narrative's intensity. "The Virgins" reminded me of Eugenides's "The Virgin Suicides" but, without the latter's quasi-surreal touches, it is much more believable. This novel is a lyrical meditation on loss - not just of virginity, but of childhood, innocence, friends, family ties and, ultimately, life itself.

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 stars. When I think of Erens writing, I envision her with a miniature wand in hand, pen-size. Her sentences are flawless, her observations of human behavior dead on. I applaud her too for creating a Korean character who is not just a stick figure. A brutally honest look at young love, racism, cultural pressure, and societal hypocrisy. A bonus also to read a story set in the time I grew up, so I enjoyed all the details that set it in that time period. I look forward to Erens' next book.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm actually at a loss for words. This is just...brilliant work. Now I can read that John Irving review.

[Mary Lins · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Virgins”, by Pamela Erens (2013), is on author Rebecca Makkai’s summer reading list so I decided to jump in and I’m glad I did! It’s a unique novel about teenage sexuality set in 1979 at a high school boarding school, with a VERY unreliable first-person narrator (I do love a narrator who tells you up front that he’s a liar!)

Bruce Bennett-Jones is telling the story of what happened to two of his classmates, Aviva Rossner and Seung Jung, who were known around campus as lovers. But all is not what it seems, and disaster awaits.

I also highly recommend Rebecca Makkai’s suspenseful novel set at a high school boarding school, “I Have Some Questions for You”.

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5. The writing is ok to good. The book is small, yet the story sometimes seems to go everywhere and nowhere, although the plot was rather thrilling. Looking back, it gets better. Maybe in one month I'll give it 4 stars

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do you remember what it was like when you thought you could tell everything about a person simply by looking at them? (Maybe you still think this.) More specifically, do you remember in high school thinking that the so-called "popular" crowd must have had it made, that the couples you saw together all the time might be together forever, that the "smart kids" had it easier than anyone else?

Pamela Erens' new novel The Virgins seeks to capture that time, those feelings. It's 1979 at Auburn Academy, a prestigious New England prep school. Seung Jung, an affably popular Korean athlete, proctor, and dabbler in recreational drugs, begins a relationship with new student Aviva Rossner, a mid-western Jewish girl both desperate to be noticed and not to be noticed, who is trying to escape an unhappy childhood. While Seung is laid-back while Aviva is intense, the two find refuge in each other and their relationship, and are caught up in the youthful exuberance of young love and sexual exploration.

"Even the teachers talked about them. Seung Jung and Aviva Rossner were bewitched."

The couple isn't ashamed of demonstrating their affection for one another wherever they are, much to the chagrin of teachers and school administrators, and both the resentment and titillation of their fellow students. Bruce Bennett-Jones, a student quick to point out he descends from one of the "better" families in New Jersey (from the same town as Seung, but from the "right side of the tracks"), narrates the novel, both from remembered observations as an outsider looking in at Aviva and Seung's relationship, and details he imagined as someone resentful of the relationship, since he was attracted to Aviva himself.

As we often learn, however, what we see and what we believe to be true isn't always the reality, and that is the case for Seung and Aviva's relationship, which struggles far short of the unbridled sexual congress their peers imagine they partake in constantly. Laden down by physical and emotional pressures, by the expectations of Seung's parents and the dissolving marriage and disregard of Aviva's, the couple realizes that they, too, don't really understand each other, which ultimately leads to tragic consequences.

The Virgins all too accurately captures the feelings of adolescent relationships and the way they affect others. And while Bruce Bennett-Jones is an unsympathetic narrator, the way Pamela Erens describes his conflicted emotions and actions is spot-on as well. I found it interesting that the book was set in 1979, because apart from random mentions of historical events (and the absence of cell phones, emails, and text messages), I didn't necessarily feel that the time period had much of a bearing on what transpired in the book—so much of the feelings and issues it portrayed are the same today.

Erens is an excellent writer and she really hooked me on the plot pretty quickly. My only regret was that while I wanted to know what happened to the main characters, other than Seung, I didn't like them much. (It's a testament to Erens' storytelling ability that some of the supporting characters were far more interesting and dynamic than Aviva and Bruce, and in fact, I would love to know what happened to them.) Aviva's emotional coldness and vacillations made her less appealing, and Bruce's actions and simultaneous bravado and self-loathing made him very hard to care about. But again, it shows the strength of Erens' story that I wanted to keep reading despite disliking the characters.

The Virgins is a tremendously intriguing social commentary and a true reflection of a time in our lives we remember all too well, no matter how far away from it we come.

[christa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The It Couple of a certain east coast prep school oozes with sex. And they’re so cool about it. Sure there are other couples, but Aviva and Seung are the ones to watch. Her: a new girl with a purple bra and a limitless credit card: Him, a swimmer with a fondness for chemistry both in the classroom and when he’s imagining THC as shaped like a pull toy.

One guy is so taken with Aviva that all he can do is watch. And imagine. And jerk the turkey. Bruce Bennett-Jones plays narrator/voyeur/fan fictionalist in Pamela Erens’ novel “The Virgins,” a short doozy of a story. The old money coxswain sees Aviva when she first sets foot on campus. He helps her carry things to her dorm room, a breach of boundaries in the single-sex living space, and within minutes is pressing himself up against her and getting all panty.

She’s not stopping him. The new girl has a hungry curiosity about sex and she just might let Mr. Bennett-Jones take this a little further. But her willingness throws him off, and the coxswain bolts from her room and decides: Know what? I’m just not that into her. He is, though. And they will find themselves alone again and he will try again and this time he takes it too far. She snuffs his candle with the promise of narking him out if he doesn’t chill.

These bits are included in Bennett-Jones’ retelling of this old love story, which, we are told early, ends tragically. Seung isn’t going to make it to the last page. The watcher writes about how the couple met, Aviva’s aggressive invitation and Seung’s embarrassing poetry. There are trips to both homes to meet the parents and so much time spent in the woods or in nooks touching each other and working up a frothy lather. Bennett-Jones plays Seung as blindly passionate, a smart dude who dabbles in drugs; Aviva is indifferent about her lover, but needs something to fill up an emptiness inside of her -- the sort of hole that requires her to, at one point, chop off her beautiful long hair. She, in turn, is passionate about passion.

Aviva is a wonderfully troubled character whose home life is splintering. Every swipe of the credit card might be the last and who knows if her dad will pay tuition next year. She’s searching for something and seemingly no one -- not even Seung -- can fill the void. This relationship isn’t doing much for Seung’s family either. The second son of Korean immigrants is instructed that he is not to get serious about this girl. Then again, who knows. All of this is according to the narrator, a member of the drama club who excels in directing. He has a knack for putting people in surprising roles.

There’s a chance this is all coming across a little beach read-y, but this really isn’t a small book about summer lovin’. This book has a delicious urban legendness to it that matches “The Virgin Suicides.” It’s about imagining what life is like for private people who capture a small factions attention. It’s also a great nostalgia trip back to a time when kissing was the end game and it could go one all day until chins had beard burn and lips were puffed and red.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel is set during the academic year of 1979-80, in an elite, East Coast boarding school – Auburn Academy. Our narrator is Bruce Bennett-Jones; something of a voyeur, he enjoys drama from the viewpoint of a director, rather than being on the stage. It is from this slightly distant perspective that we witness events, beginning with the arrival of Aviva Rossner, whom Bruce is instantly attracted to. Both come from wealthy families, but neither is as perfect as they first seem. Bruce’s father is a judge, but his sons often resent his controlling behaviour and his mother drinks. Aviva’s parents split up and neither she, nor her mother, knows how to cope without the money they have come to expect will be always there.

Before long, Aviva has met up with fellow student Seung Jung. Bruce and Seung were at a previous school together, where Seung had been seen as a slightly nerdy student – sometimes bullied – and where Bruce was far higher in the student pecking order. However, now that Seung is older, he is much more attractive and popular and it soon becomes apparent that he and Aviva are drawn together like moths to a flame. Before long they are a couple – in fact, ‘the’ couple – displaying a public exhibitionism which gets them noticed by students and staff.

Author Pamela Erens recreates the stress of young passion very well in this novel. The difficulty of teenage hormones, too much self awareness and being on the cusp of adulthood and yet, still children, with others very much in control. Seung’s Korean parents are concerned that his studies will be affected by his desire for this young girl from a different culture. There are issues with eating disorders, drug use and conflicting emotions. She perfectly captures that stage of life when everything seems so overwhelming and difficult to deal with. As the story continues, you sense that they are heading towards inevitable tragedy and can only, like Bruce, be a witness to unfolding events. This is a disturbing, unsettling read and, as well as being an interesting personal read, would offer a lot for reading groups to discuss.

Rated 3.5

[Ylenia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This was my second experience with Pamela Erens and it went exactly as Eleven Hours did: a good book at first, that leave you unsatisfied when you reach the end.

The more I read of The Virgins, the more I realized how many things Erens tried to deal with; we obviously had a love story. Aviva and Seung had problems with their own families, separately and together. Drugs, friends, childhood, school. But sex and relationships seemed to me the main topic this book focused on.

The reason why this book has that specific title is that, although Aviva and Seung were perceived by everyone in their boarding school as a lusting couple, they remained virgins.
This book might be lacking near the end, but every part of it that was about sex was extremely well written and realistic. The author managed to portray the expectations, the anxiety, the struggles, the desire, the need.

This book was also interesting because it was narrated by an outside spectator, a student of the boarding school, just like Seung and Aviva. It was fascinating because Bruce Bennett-Jones was a bit of a morally-grey-character - reminding me of The Secret History or If We Were Villains at times - and because it enhanced the idea behind the book (things are more complicated than they seem + you can't really what's going on in a relationship if you're not in it).

Unfortunately, even if this book was set in 1979, it felt unbelievable at times. I always had this (maybe wrong) belief that people were a little bit more mature back then, but I often had to remind myself these characters were graduating from high-school and not college.
The characters (even the main ones sometimes) felt rather flat and empty.

If you like sad love stories you might love this one but I can't say I'd recommend it for any specific other reason.

[Nicole Wolverton]

There are many things to like about The Virgins. First and foremost, though, is that this is a story that is, most likely, a complete fabrication. I mean that in more than a Well, gee, Nicole, it's fiction kind of a way. The narrator--Bruce Bennett-Jones--is the narrator, and he's sort of a by-stander in the story of of Aviva Rossner and Seung Jung, supposedly the most sexually obvious couple at an elite boarding school for high schoolers. It should also be noted that Bennett-Jones is a completely unlikeable narrator because of his sexual aggressiveness and his absolute lack of a sense of responsibility about anything. Much of the story he tells about Aviva and Seung is imagined, so he's also high unreliable. The year his story takes place is 1979-ish, but he recalls it from his position as an older man, telling the story as he thinks it happened. He speculates based on only two or three interactions with Aviva and Seung, singly or together.

To say more would be to spoil the ending, particularly what happens to Seung and Bennett-Jones' role in it (or at least what he claims was his role in it). I've been sitting here thinking about the novel for hours, and I'm still not sure how much of what's reported might be true (within the context of the book, I mean) and how much is what Bennett-Jones wished to have happened.

Much is made of Aviva's Jewishness and Seung's Koreanness, but in the end I don't know that their ethnicities mattered so much. The story would have worked just as well with two white characters, one black and one Middle Eastern character, etc. That's about the only complaint I might make. Otherwise, I really enjoyed reading the novel, and I'm now going to pick up Erens' debut novel.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. I know high school and early college years are full of drama for a lot of people, but wow. This book is super dramatic, and I find pretty much everyone in it despicable or at least lacking in many truly redeeming qualities. I don't have to like a book's characters to like the book, but I do want to believe the characters, to believe that they are real and have dimension. Everyone here is a grotesque, and I'm just not impressed. I get why the author makes some of her choices, particularly with regard to what happens at the end of the book. In terms of her plot I get why she does what she does, but in another way it doesn't make sense, or at least not to me. Who would do what these characters do? I am choosing not to write a review with spoilers, so I'll leave it at that. Technically, the book feels well-written, but I can't recommend it. This is definitely one where I feel that YMMV. 2.5 stars.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 4 out of 5]

an enjoyable, easy read told from the point of view of a slightly odd unreliable narrator. who doesn't love a coming of age novel set in a boarding school where everyone is obsessed with sex and relationships? no one that's who. plus it's 1979? let's go!

as lots of people have said on here, it is reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides and like 'suicides' we never really get to know any of the characters as they are observed and obsessed about from afar, and it's all about the surface and what you think may be going on.

my favourite character was Aviva's mom.. but was she a real or an imagined character? my husband refuses to have that conversation with me as he says that it's a novel so none of it's real. gah.

[Celeste Ng]

The plot itself is simple--it's more a story of what didn't happen than what did, almost a novel version of a Stuart Dybek short story I love, "We Didn't." But the telling of it is what makes this work: the story is told--reconstructed and re-imagined, actually--by a classmate of the lovers, giving Ehrens essentially a first-person unreliable omniscient narrator. So interesting from a writing perspective! And I applaud Ehrens for creating an Asian character who is complex and isn't stereotypical.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wonderful read! I've been eagerly awaiting the next book by Pamela Erens and this one did not disappoint! So worth the wait. I stayed up late to finish it because I could not put it down. The narrative voice is interesting and critically important to the telling of the story...and becomes ever more so as the book wends toward its fascinating and deeply satisfying finish. What a read! I highly recommend it.