Suicide of a virgin

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: This is a novel about youthful confusion. It blends love and horror, romance and suicide, as well as memory and imagination. A film adaptation with the same title premiered in the United States, starring the up-and-coming actress Kristen Dunst. The author takes us to a house in the suburbs of America in the 1970s, surrounded by elms. The Lembke family raised five beautiful daughters: the intelligent Theresa, the picky Mary, the devout Bonnie, the reckless Lucas, and the innocent and fragile Celia. But these five sisters commit suicide one after another in a mysterious manner. The novel begins with the story of Mary taking sleeping pills to her death through the eyes of a group of neighborhood boys, followed by a retrospect of Celia's suicide by wrist slashing.