Summary
The story takes place in Michigan during the 1970's and is told from the perspective of the neighborhood boys who seem to be obsessed with the Lisbon girls. The book opens with an ambulance taking away the last daughter who committed suicide. It then jumps to the past events, thirteen months ago, that led up to the suicides. It all started with the youngest daughter Cecilia, thirteen, after her first attempt to commit suicide. The Lisbon parents kept the girls on lockdown in the house for the rest of the summer. During a party that was suppose to cheer Cecilia up, she instead decides to jump out the second story window of the house to commit suicide. She succeeds and is impaled on a fence. The story is then about the aftermath of Cecilia's death and how the four remaining sister are dealing it. The local community and narrating neighborhood boys are also constantly discussing Cecilia's death and the Lisbon family as a whole. The boys even steal Cecilia's diary in hopes of finding something that will explain her death.
Once school starts the girls tend to keep to themselves. The next youngest girl Lux, fourteen, starts to take interest in a boy named Trip. Trip then get's Mr. Lisbon to agree to let him and his friends take the four girls to the Homecoming dance. Lux and Trip leave the dance and she arrives home late, after curfew. Her action gets all of the girls in trouble and Mrs. Lisbon restricts them to the house, taking them out of school. The Lisbon house begins to fall apart remaining unkept and dirty. After Trip and the other boys fail to call the girls again, they become depressed and stay in their rooms all day. To make matters worse, Mr. Lisbon loses his job and the city attempts to cut down the Elm tree in the front yard. The one thing that reminded the girls the most of Cecilia.
After months of being locked up in the house, the girls begin to contact the boys with paper notes and eventually brief telephone messages. Determined to help the girls the boys make a plan to drive the girls away, one night. Lux invites the boys in the house and tells them to wait for her sisters. She insists on waiting in the car after some time has passed the boys walk around the house looking for the other girls. That is when it is discovered that all of the girls have committed suicide. Therese, the oldest, by sleeping pills, Bonnie by hanging and Lux from asphyxiation. Mary attempted to kill herself using the oven, and the paramedics were able to save her, although she did die a month later by overdosing on sleeping pills. The Lisbon parents then sell their house and move. The new residents erasing the last traces of the Lisbon girls as the boys watch the neighborhood slowly forget what happened.
Analysis
In the book the author deals with themes of conformity and happiness within society. The neighborhood tries to not mention the word "suicide" after Cecilia first makes the attempt. Even at the school remembrance of Cecilia, no one mentions her suicide. The story is set in a mundane suburban area outside of Detroit. The neighborhood tries to keep the facade of a happy, normal American society. The death of the Lisbon girls signify the downfall of the suburban community.
The title of the book, The Virgin Suicides is symbolic. The virgin represents the innocence of the girls and their journey puberty and teenage hormones. The suicides are literal but also figurative in that it brings up the notion of virgin sacrifices. Also the card with the Virgin Mary appears several times, also representing the innocence of the girls.
As a way to show the time of year, Eugenides uses fish flies to signify the summer season. They are a great way to show the passage of time. The elm trees are a symbol of the decay of the Lisbon family as well as the neighborhood. The elm tree in the Lisbon yard gets a sick and is then cut down. The last reminder the girls had of their sister Cecilia. At the end of the book, all of the elm trees on the block are cut down and the community see this as a spread of the disease that started with the Lisbon family.
A good piece of imagery comes at the end of the story. With Mary being carried out on a stretcher. She had a veil on her head and the firework sounds in the background. As if a "national figure is being laid to rest" (Eugenides, Pg. 232. pp. 2). This shows the tragedy of the death of the five girls as well as an end to the suicides.
Thoughts
When I started reading this book, I knew of the movie but not exactly what the story was. So I went in not knowing what to expect. After reading the first two chapters of the book, I got curious and decided to watch the movie. Which was a mistake because after knowing the ending I sort of lost interest, resulting in it taking longer to finish the book then I had planned. I did enjoy the movie though. Now the book opens with the last suicide before jumping back in time to tell the story from the beginning. So the ending is not really a surprise. Since it's in the title, we expect the story to end with the suicides. The narrating boys go a bit further to give a short epilogue of what happened to the Lisbon parents and the neighborhood as a whole.
The Lisbon girls are described to be ordinary and the only thing unique about them was their suicides. It's what they will be remembered for and are seen as the start of the decline of their neighborhood. Throughout the whole book, the boys are constantly trying to find reasons for why the girls committed suicide. Even as adults they still go through the evidence the gathered, seeking answers. The narrating boys state that the girls simply refused to accept the flawed world that they lived in and that's why they committed suicide (Eugenides, Pg.239, pp.2). In the end the author does not give a clear reason for why the girls decided to end their lives. Instead he keeps the suicides as a symbol and reflection of the problems in society.
While this is not really the kind of book that I would be interested in reading. Eugenides has a style that is detailed oriented and slow paced. It is still a good read and is sort of a coming of age story. I'm not sure that I will ever read this again, but I would recommend it to those that are interested in American literature. It does a good job at showing the a typical suburban town in America during the 1970's and what the pressures of societal expectations were like during that time. Even though I was not that impressed with this book, I would still be interested in reading other works from Jeffrey Eugenides. Specifically his Pulitzer Prize winning novel Middlesex.
Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Virgin Suicides. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
Well that's my review for the book. I hope you all enjoyed it. It's not an extensive analysis. There's a lot of other things that could be covered, but unless I read it a second time it's hard to fully discuss everything in detail. If you have any thoughts about the book please feel free to share them in the comments or tweet at me @BelleArboreus. You can also find the blog on Instagram @fantastic_literature . I will be posting a short audio podcast of this review. I will also be starting a new review segment on Fridays, so look out for both of those. Thanks for reading!
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