The Virgin Suicides (1993)

Over the span of a year in the early 1970s, the five teenage Lisbon sisters commit suicide, leaving an indelible scar on the close-knit Michigan community where they live. Twenty years later, the unnamed narrator, one of a group of young men besotted with the Lisbons, tries to give an account of those tragic events. His intention is to present an objective report, complete with “exhibits” and testimonies. The prose, however, is anything but detached or scientific – it often burns with a febrile, poetic intensity. The very normal suburban setting becomes the backdrop for a surreal tale which veers from gothic tragedy to dark comedy and back again. These incongruities invite an allegorical reading – the Lisbons as metaphors for the boys’ coming of age and sexual awakening, the novel itself as an unbearably nostagic elegy for a past which seems just beyond reach and yet will never come back. ( )

I love this movie, so I was disappointed in the novel. I think it mostly had to do with the way it was written like a document or something. I still love the story and find the characters intriguing. Honestly, I read it quickly and don't think I paid enough attention. I need to re-read it at some point. ( )

I love the way the author depicts being a young girl and maturing both mentally and physically. The virgin suicides sums up how boys want to collect us (girls) like dolls, aiming to claim the prettiest or best, whatever they desire. They develop expectations and fantasies but as soon as we become the sexiest or hottest or whatever they want we aren’t desirable anymore. We become too real and are no longer an unnatainable dream in their head. ( )

"Las hermanas Lisbon se sentían perezosas. En la ventana parecía que la luz del mundo se hubiera ensombrecido. Inútilmente se restregaron los ojos. Se sentían torpes y pesadas. Los objetos de la casa habían perdido significado. Un reloj de cabecera se convirtió en un trozo de plástico moldeado que indicaba algo llamado tiempo y que estaba en un mundo cuyo paso marcaba por alguna razón. Cuando pensábamos en las chicas en estas condiciones nos la imaginábamos como criaturas febriles que exhalaban un aliento pesado y que día tras día iban marchitándose en su aislado recinto".

De la base del recuerdo adolescente, un grupo de jóvenes narran y reconstruyen cómo fue su vida y su relación con cinco hermanas de una familia conservadora y religiosa que, por diferentes motivos, se suicidan. La trama superficial es esa, pero hay más atrás de eso: un análisis medio crítico de esa clase media norteamericana medio suburbana que parece solidaria con su comunidad, pero que evita entrar en materias más íntimas.

Pero hay otra trama, esa que habla de la pérdida de la inocencia, del retorno de los recuerdos adolescentes aunque vistos bajo un prisma diferente, menos romántico, descargado de la ilusión que generaron las hermanas Lisbon entre medio de estos jóvenes medio obsesivos con ellas. Hay angustia por creer que pudieron salvarlas y hay melancolía porque dejar morir los recuerdos y las cosas que guardaron de ellas y que van perdiendo color, brillo, consistencia, significa dejar morir su propia adolescencia. Eugenides sabe mezclar esas tramas y entrega, finalmente, un libro que no es fácil de leer entre medio de la resistencia de los narradores a perder una época de sus vidas. ( )

3.5***

Eugenides’ debut work focuses on one family in a Detroit suburb. The five Lisbon sisters chafe against their mother’s strict rules and attract the attention of the neighborbood boys. Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese are beautiful and eccentric, and off limits. And then one commits suicide, and the four remaining sisters struggle to find their way out of grief – both their own and their parents’.

The novel is narrated by a group of thirty-something men, looking back on their own early high-school years, and the way they were obsessed with the Lisbon girls. Watching – or more accurately, spying on – them, looking for clues as to what they were thinking and what they might do. They applaud the efforts of one jock to take the object of his affections, fourteen-year-old Lux, to the homecoming dance. And they watch as a missed curfew results in Mrs Lisbon’s ever restrictive rules. The boys are certain they will somehow rescue the girls. They cannot see that the troubles the girls face are much deeper than just being grounded.

I read Middlesex first and loved it. Eugenides can write characters that fairly jump off the page, they are so real and so passionate about their feelings. But this book is somewhat different. There is an ethereal quality to this novel. We never really know what happens inside the Lisbon home, we have only the memories of men who, some twenty years later, cannot let go of the events of that year. What they remember most clearly is how they felt – their hopes, dreams, passions, fears. And although the boys witnessed the girls’ final acts, they are haunted by what they did not – and never will – know. ( )