Currently reading

The Lottery and Other Stories
Shirley Jackson
11/22/63
Stephen King
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides I find it a bit difficult to write this review, as it's hard to put into words exactly why this book was so good. I guess in the end, it's the fact that it touched me very much - it's depressing and sweet and full of the "I don't really know what's going on"-feeling that I think everybody has experienced in their lives, especially as teens.

Eugenides writes very well and although he might seem a bit heavy-handed with the descriptions when you first start to read, the flow of his language and the (almost) poetry of it is really lovely. The rather unusual narrator voice of first person plural works surprisingly well and manages a balance between the yearning teenage boys and the melancholic middle-aged men. And despite being a 30-year old woman, I felt like a part of the "us" that watched and was desperately fascinated by the Lisbon girls - while all along having perhaps a much better idea of what "happened" to the girls as someone who was once a teenage girl myself.

While most teenage girls thankfully never go as far as the Lisbon girls, I think the intangible and desperate feeling they seem to experience and live through in different ways, is something that most teenage girls have experienced. And I personally still have no words for that feeling, but I am humbled by Eugenides' ability to make this book resonate that feeling still...

Absolutely recommended for anyone! :)