The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

I've been reading a lot of really heavy stuff lately and have been feeling depressed and weary. I wanted to read something light and funny.
So I chose The Virgin Suicides.
Ha!
I absolutely adored Middlesex and this author's style, so I knew I wanted to read his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, and now seemed like a good time. It is an easy read, undoubtedly, albeit rather maudlin. Jeffrey Eugenides definitely has an amazing way with words and can make me feel at home in situations that are completely unnatural to me. That is true talent. I appreciate his dark humor and interesting outlooks.
The Virgin Suicides doesn't really tell us anything new ... it doesn't solve any problems... but, somehow, I feel better for having read it. We will never know what goes on in the minds of others. No matter how much they share with us. No matter the stories they tell us or the songs they sing ... we can never know someone else's deepest thoughts. We can only know our own (and even that is up for debate, truth be told). We don't ever really know what goes on behind closed doors, but this storyteller ... this unknown "we" ... let us know how the little fingerprints the Lisbon girls left on their neighborhood affected them. Their whole lives. And I was glad to have shared a very small taste.