The neighborhood boys try to understand the five Lisbon sisters, long after their deaths
What it is about
In a Michigan suburb in the 1970s, the five Lisbon sisters die within a year of each other. Years later, a group of boys who were fascinated by them try to piece together what happened using memories, photos and other evidence. They tell the story in a collective ‘we’.
Who will enjoy it
Readers who like atmospheric, literary novels. The subject is suicide, so it is a heavy read.
What you will get
A short, haunting debut novel. It is lyrical and unsettling, and it has an ending you know from the first page.
The Virgin Suicides Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Literary Fiction · Mystery · Memory · Adolescence
Length
249 pages · ≈ 7 h
More about this book
Characters
The five Lisbon sisters and the boys who watched them.
Setting
Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in the 1970s.
What makes it different
A narrator who is a group of men, remembering girls they never really knew.
Feel
Dreamy, sad and strange.
Middlesex
The Things They Carried
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Atonement
House Made of Dawn
Interpreter of Maladies