"Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

New York : Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1993.

From the opening paragraph, it becomes apparent that this book is different. Written in the rare first person plural, the book is told from the perspective of a group of teenage boys obsessed with the memory of five sisters, the Lisbons, who committed suicide and who, many years later, they have not forgotten. Set in a dreamy, nostalgic version of the 1970s but released in the 1990s (along with a career-making film adaptation by Sofia Coppola), the book offers lots in the way of atmosphere and emotion, but little in the way of answers.