The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides | Review

Source: Hannah Karina, Flickr.

Written in beautiful prose, sometimes hilarious and often creepy, The Virgin Suicides tells the story of the five Lisbon sisters and how they came to kill themselves. 

It's set in a suburban town in America, from the narrative viewpoint of the men who were once the boys that witnessed the suicides of Mary, Therese, Cecilia, Bonnie and Lux. 

All through the book the reader is subject to the yearning they felt as boys to be close to the Lisbon sisters; to speak to them, or reach out to them. To touch these untouchable girls and let them know that they exist. The style and tone of the book casts an image of these angelic yet unreadable girls, gliding through the halls of their high school, affecting everyone but never noticing.

The book depicts wonderfully the way a community reacts to crisis. It is shown best of all when, after Cecilia is the first of the girls to kill herself by jumping out her window and onto the garden fence below, the men of the street come together and decide the only way to respond is to take the fence down.

One of the many, many things I love about this book is that it is in no way a book that is trying to explain suicide. In some parts of the book, it's difficult to distinguish if Eugenides is even trying to make a point about suicide at all. 

It could be argued that the Lisbon girls did it to escape from the tyranny of their over-protective mother, or because they were sick and tired of being watched, gawped over and idolised by the boys in the town. But none of that seems right.

For the most part, it just feels like a story about an interesting turn of events that happened over the course of a year. The way that the boys' efforts to save the girls seem almost silly, and how now, as men, their attempt to try and understand why the Lisbon sisters had to die is depicted as futile, conveys the idea that there is nothing to be understood, nothing to be interpreted.

To me, there is not explanation as to why the Lisbon girls killed themselves. And to go looking for one is a waste of time. The suicides are simply things happened and, unfortunately, something that the boys will find hard to forget.