Books - The Virgin Suicides

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	Books - The Virgin Suicides

The Virgin Suicides is a 1993 novel by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The novel tells of the suicides of the Lisbon girls, five sisters in suburban Michigan during the 1970s. The suicides fascinate their community as their neighbors struggle to find an explanation for the acts.

The novel is atypical in that it was written in first person plural from the perspective of an anonymous group of men who became infatuated with the girls as adolescents, a style mirroring a Greek chorus. The narrator(s) rely on relics and interviews gathered in the two decades after the suicide to construct the tale. The novel is rich in descriptive detail, using observations about the state of the Lisbon house and the contents of the girls’ rooms to advance the plot. The effect is that the reader glimpses the novel’s main characters as if he or she were one of the neighborhood onlookers.

The novel was released to significant critical acclaim and was adapted into a successful 1999 film by director Sofia Coppola.

Storyline

At the outset of the novel, the Lisbons seem like a normal Catholic family. The father is a math teacher at the local high school and the mother is a homemaker. The family has five daughters: 13-year old Cecilia, 14-year-old Lux, 15-year-old Bonnie, 16-year-old Mary, and 17-year-old Therese. (Despite this, the very first sentence of the novel makes its conclusion unmistakably clear.)

Their lives change dramatically within one summer when Cecilia, a stoic and astute girl, attempts suicide by cutting herself. A few weeks later, the girls throw a chaperoned party at which Cecilia jumps from their second story window, ending her life.

Afterwards, life seemingly returns to normal for the Lisbons—although the cause of Cecilia’s suicide and its aftereffects on the family are popular subjects of neighborhood gossip. The mystique of the Lisbon girls also increases to the neighborhood boys.

Lux begins a romance with local heartthrob Trip Fontaine. Trip negotiates with the overprotective Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon to take Lux to a homecoming dance on the condition that he finds dates for the other three girls. The girls attend the dance but Trip and Lux sneak off afterwards to have sex and Lux misses curfew.

Afterwards, the Lisbons become recluses. The girls are pulled out of school and Mr. Lisbon is fired for his erratic behavior. The Lisbons do not care for their house or garden anymore. From a safe distance, all the people in the neighborhood watch the Lisbons, but no one can summon up the courage to intervene.

Afterwards, the Lisbons become increasingly fascinating to the neighborhood in general and the neighborhood boys in specific. The boys call the Lisbon girls and communicate by playing records over the telephone for the girls. Also, Lux begins a series of promiscuous sexual encounters on the Lisbon’s roof.

Eventually, the girls send a message to their distant admirers asking for help escaping the house. But moments after they arrive, the four sisters kill themselves in a suicide pact. Mary survives but successfully ends her life months later. Afterwards, Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon leave the neighborhood. The house is sold and most of the Lisbons’ personal effects are sold in a garage sale.

Style and point-of-view

The story is told by an anonymous narrator always in the first person plural, thus hiding behind a peer group. These middle-aged men keep in touch with each other, if only to be the "custodians of the girls' lives." The subject of the girls always comes up whenever they "run into each other at cocktail parties or business luncheons."

Still in mourning, the group keeps a collection of "evidence" they have gathered ("Exhibits Nos. 1-97") concerning the Lisbons, which they guard like fetishes. It includes Cecilia’s diary, family photographs and personal objects from the girls’ rooms.

The narrator mentions several interviews he conducts with people who lived in the neighborhood during the time of the Lisbon suicides. Some are people who played a prominent role in the story (Mrs. Lisbon and an aging, substance-addicted Trip Fontaine) and some are merely onlookers, such as an old drunk who lived across from the Lisbons and a teacher who was the neighborhood’s sole communist. All the people mentioned in the novel—amounting to more than 150 names—become witnesses to, and commentators on, the tragedy that befalls the Lisbon family.

It remains unclear whom he is addressing and for what official purpose he and his fellow mourners have collected all their memorabilia and conducted their interviews. Despite all their efforts they are still at a loss as far as the tragic events of their youth are concerned.

The movie

: Sofia Coppola wrote the screenplay and directed a 97 minute film version, released in 1999. The film starred Kirsten Dunst, James Woods, Kathleen Turner and Josh Hartnett.

For such an elusive novel, the film was remarkably true to Eugenides’ book. Much of the dialogue and narration is taken directly from the novel.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Virgin Suicides ]

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