BOOK: "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Published Monday, September 03, 2007 by Rose | E-mail this post
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides would be worth reading for it's collective, communal male voice, even if the story wasn't ethereal and scary and passionate.I put several years between seeing the movie version at the now-defunct York Square Cinema and reading the book, mostly in Brookline and on the train home from my little vacation. I assumed the experience of both would be different and they are, but not by much.
Essentially, the book chronicles the year the five Lisbon girls committed suicide, starting with Cecilia, the youngest, and followed, not quite a year later, by Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese. Don't worry, I'm not ruining the plot for you--this is all pretty much explained at the beginning. This is not about suspense, but about the outward effects of the tragedy and the males' obsession with it. Of course, we find, at the end, why this collective male voice is so concerned with it, but that explanation here would ruin the story.
The prose meanders between factual account and romantic pondering. There's a persistent sense of frustration from the narrators, that they cannot really know the why of it all and that, eventually, rubs off onto the reader. The more you know, the more you want to know. It's a peculiar occurrence, really, for five daughters to off themselves. And understanding it seems harder and harder, the more information and impressions you receive about the girls.
The "girl that changes everything" archetype is here--if the girl was five sisters and the change is suicide. Normally you get a drifter girl, comes to town, re-aligns everyone's perceptions and she rides, Eastwood-style, into the sunset. This obviously breaks from that--the narrators both seem to remember certain things about each girl--in fact, they have "Exhibits" from each of them, that they keep for years:
(#18) Mary's old cosmetics drying out and turning to beige dust; (#32) Cecilia's canvas high-tops yellowing beyond remedy of toothbrush and dish soap; (#57) Bonnie's votive candles nibbled nightly by mice; (#62) Therese's speciment slides showing new invading bacteria; (#81) Lux brassiere...(page 246)And, at other times, they see them all as one person. As an entity, they only really become one thing, one phenomenon, after the five suicides are complete. They change these men, the ones who collected bits and pieces of the Lisbon girls--they persist in their memories, even in encounters with other women. With their death, they eclipse everything that happens later, shift perspective on life.
I don't know if the whole thing is one big allegory--for the death of a way of life, for the loss of innocence, for the poignancy and lasting effect of youthful experiences, for the cost of the world changing--but it could be read that way.
The book is both personal and communal, the voice, of course, confirming that--we get private stories in a larger viewpoint. I was left, at the end of the book, as bereft as the boys who loved the Lisbon girls, just as unsure as to what it all means. Like searching for the Holy Grail, understanding the reasons the girls killed themselves is unattainable, no matter how many objects are collected, facts uncovered, everything analyzed. The answer is lost, in death.
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