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SoothingDisarray t1_jclagfr wrote

I'll respond with a "good" throwing a book across the room so this isn't just a hate thread.

For me it was the Virgin Suicides, which I read many years before the movie came out so it was more of an unknown novel back then. (It was a popular literary novel upon first publication, so I'm not saying it was truly unknown, just less so.)

I really loved (and still do love) that book. But it's a complex narrative voice, the first person plural, and it's the voice of all the boys of a town, now adults, looking back on these girls they were obsessed with. It's a really interesting way of writing, just a little bit creepy, but also sad, because the narrative "we" voice is writing from adulthood, reminiscing about their youth.

So throughout the book I was thinking why are they so obsessed, still obsessed after so many years, in many ways their lives ruined by this obsession. But it's "they" because there is no clear narrator. It's all of them.

And then I got to the climactic scene and I was so... mad. Mad that the titular event pretty much took a whole town with it. It was beautiful and infuriating to me.

The movie, for what it's worth, was also very good. But in the end I feel like the movie was about the girls and the book was about the boys. Which makes sense. It's hard to capture that first person plural narrative voice in a film.

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UnfallenAdventure OP t1_jclaxlu wrote

Wow that sounds amazing. Do you have the author?

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SuccotashCareless934 t1_jclezki wrote

Jeffrey Eugenides.

Virgin Suicides is decent, but Middlesex by him is absolutely fantastic.

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SoothingDisarray t1_jclhakx wrote

I loved Middlesex (it reminded me a lot of Salman Rushie's books). For me, though, Virgin Suicides is that perfect rare gem of a book that doesn't have any real analogues. I read Virgin Suicides when much younger and it impacted me in this unexpected emotionally resonant way. It's hard to step outside oneself when judging books!

Eugenides hasn't written much after his first two literary darlings. I couldn't really get into The Marriage Plot and that's his only other novel since 1993. I hope to read more by him one day!

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