Book review: The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

Posted on | February 2, 2012 | 1 Comment

Title: The Virgin Suicides (1993)
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
ISBN-13: 9780747560593
Release date: October 7th 2002
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Genre: literary fiction, contemporary fiction
Source: public library
Challenges: To Be Read Pile challenge
Verdict: ★★★★★

Summary
The tragic fate of the Lisbon girls, five pretty blonde sisters aged between 13 and 17, is described through the memories of a group of neighbourhood boys who loved them deeply. By recounting the events that occurred in the span of a single year, they try desperately to capture once more the essence of those mysterious girls.

Review
The first paragraph of the book spells out what the story is about: the reader is informed that all the Lisbon girls will die by suicide. This fact, however, does not spoil the rest of the story. The big question that remains after someone takes his or her own life is why? Which circumstances led to the tragedy of suicide? Why did this person choose death over life? And it is this that the boys – the “we” narrator(s) of the book – try to answer every day. They try to conjure up the ghosts of Bonnie, Therese, Lux, Cecilia and Mary in order to find the truth or part of the truth. They contact Mr. Lisbon and Mrs. Lisbon long after they have separated and even trace down Trip Fontaine who has grown up to be an alcoholic. Armed with precious bits of information, the boys/men who adored the Lisbon sisters file away their treasures in their treehouse. But even they know that physical memories do not last forever… so they tell their story. Probably over and over again.
Could they have prevented the girls’ deaths? No. They know this, and never doubt the truth of it. Locked into their home, the girls were under strict surveillance of their mother, so if anything was going to happen, it was them who had to make the first move.
I wonder, were the girls and their father subjected to the tyranny of Mrs. Lisbon? Or did Mr. Lisbon soon resign himself to the inevitability of their premature deaths and did he decide to go through the motions of living while actually being far away? Were the girls truly fed up with life, exasperated or bored by it or did they foresee a sombre future like the boys think they did? Or was it simply a pact they made, to follow Cecilia, the youngest and weird one?
The book doesn’t exactly answer any questions. It only tries to convey an accurate timeline of their last year on earth, their ethereal images drenched in nostalgia, their moves and speech analysed in detail from several angles and backed up by different witnesses. Or perhaps this was the way I chose to read it. It is also the tale of adolescent boys, who have not yet lost their innocence and who – across the divide of years and death – have never forgotten their first loves or the need to save them. Even as grown men, they cannot leave the memory of the girls behind and fully live in the here and now, with their wives and families.
I recommend watching the movie adaptation as well, it remains very true to the book and adds a new dimension to the tragedy of the Lisbon girls’ deaths.

How did you interpret their suicides? Did you like the book? Have you read any other works by Jeffrey Eugenides?