Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

This the thread for the Buddy Read of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. This read will begin on September 15, 2026.

Looks like a number of us are in for this read, just on slightly different schedules with getting the book. I hope to pick mine up today. There is no cut-off date, so we can dip into October if need be.

Oh, Goodness, I am so sorry to say I am DNFing this book at 45 pages. I read the first chapter, stopped, started over the next day, read two chapters this time, and stopped again. I cannot bring myself to stick with this one. Sometimes it just doesn't fit and for me, right now, this won't. I hope it has an opposite effect on the rest of you. I think my situation right now calls for kinder books or books that pull me into another world that I want to be in.

Oh my, sorry this didn’t work for you, Sara. I avoided this book for a time due to the title. I cannot start it yet but hope I can get through it. If not, I won’t hesitate to put it down.

I can see why members may avoid this. I am finishing today and will offer thoughts when done.

Despite the triggering content, the book was an interesting read. It also has been adapted into a film of the same name by Sofia Coppola (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29k7...

For our present eyes, I think the film brings out the comic in the novel better. The novel reads seriocomic but I think the comic in the novel does not work for us now. The young male lustful fantasies are far more creepy than cute, and the book has more the feel of horror than comic, and the voyeurism is part of that horror. A good companion piece to read with this is "The Body," by Stephen King, also included in Different Seasons which featured "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank redemption, our short read this month. It was made into the film "Stand By Me," by Rob Reiner, (1986).

I just received my copy from the library--finally. From the cover on the library's copy, I see how some humor is intended.

Mine is not yet available, darn!

This could be read as historical fiction. This book was published in 1993. The suicide epidemic or a surge of suicides of young people is described in the novel. The information could be lifted--legally--from information from the CDC--The Centers for Disease Control. So this is the serious part of the serio-comic writing.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwr...

The teenaged men and their older selves provide the comedy.


Various community members provide the contemplative part, doing their best to understand the suicides, often saying something something that was trying to or that was pithy. The last attempt at saying something pity:

Capitalism has resulted in material well-being but spiritual bankruptcy."

which then likely stands in as the narrator's best idea in book. Not definitely. Just likely.

The mid-1970s, the time in which the story is set, is a time of financial stagnation for the middle class.

I wish I could find a copy of a social studies book I read way back late last century, titled something like *When All Americans were Middle Class*. Remember when Americans considered our country to be a middle class country, an idea of the past.

On my physical bookshelf I have a book that keeps calling me to read it--for about 10 years: The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager: A Groundbreaking Study of Youth Identity from Puritans to Modern Consumerism by Thomas Hine (1999). Maybe more information--not a definitive answer this novel begs--can be found here.

I'm doing a little book housekeeping, and decided to remove my hold for this from the library. It's looking like there's no way I'll get it until next year anyway, so I think I'll try for The Marriage Plot sometime next year, and wait to see about this one in the future. I appreciate your thoughts, Sam and Cynda!

I still have it on my deck, but we’ll see when I can get back to it.

Not really sure why I bothered to read this uninspired, unfocused and dull garbage after 36 years.

The unknown narrator's inability to let go of the events of his adolescence was more interesting to me than the reasons why the Lisbon sisters committed suicide. But that's something else unknowable, so I'm just moving on.