reading through college

I feel like it’s a little odd to say this because the themes and general plot of the novel is so dark, but I really wish I wrote The Virgin Suicides, not Jeffrey Eugenides (1993); it’s dark, sexual, coming-of-age, humorous when it wants to be, and surreal.  It plays with traditional narrative style and haunts your mind for years after you read it.

The novel is about the suicides of the five teenage Lisbon girls, ages 13 through 17, over a year in a suburb of Detroit. (Don’t worry; I’m not giving anything away.) The reader gets the Lisbons’ story through the viewpoint of a group of neighborhood boys who grew up dreaming and fantasizing about the mysterious and beautiful blondes across the street. The tale comes from their adult perspectives, after having conducted interviews, collected “evidence,” and having replayed countless memories over and over in hopes of unraveling the mystery of the girls’ suicides.

Throughout the novel, journalists use the suicides as a tool to warn the public about the dangers of adolescence and teenage depression. His first novel (more reason to bitterly, jealously hate him), Eugenides does not use the book as a warning of these dangers, nor as a way to enlighten the public about why teenagers may commit suicide at all. Rather, to me, The Virgin Suicides is a coming-of-age novel that mourns that pain of growing up. The cynicism the neighborhood boys express at the end of the novel is in conflict with the romanticized versions of the Lisbon girls that to which they still cling—even as the relics of that time, (their “evidence” in photographs, diary entries, records the girls played, their scents) like everything else, begin to decay with time.

Although mourning the act of growing up, it’s clear that there is also a sad acceptance of the moving on of life. There is no Peter Pan who wants to stay a child forever. At a themed debutante party, the boys turn their attention from the dead Lisbon girls to “girls who had never considered taking their own lives.”  In this moment, when the boys touch their lips to the very real, very alive lips of their peers, it’s clear that a bubble has been popped. That the time when things were untouchable but better off that way for they could be romanticized, fantasized about, is over. Although the boys grew up obsessed with the Lisbon girls, it turns out that they never even really knew them at all. (As my American Lit professor would say—deflation!)

Being a fan of subtlety, surrealism, and creepiness, one of my favorite aspects of the novel is the way Eugenides sets up the disturbing nature of the story past the five girls’ suicides. There are the fish flies, covering the suburb once a year and dying within hours; the neighborhood mobster family; the rotting nature of the Lisbon house; and my personal favorite scene of the book, a young girl’s debutante party themed “Asphyxiation,” a theme chosen in light of the toxic smell from a factory spill. Besides being simply uncommon—though possible—in their own right, these background images all revolve around darkness and decay, building a lush carpet on which it’s plausible that five young girls would commit suicide. Furthermore, they suggest a sort of dark inevitability and continuance to the novel, like despair and strangeness isn’t just isolated to the Lisbon family.

The story is so hypnotic and unearthly, I was more than happy to find the excuse to re-read it (and to re-watch the movie, as my class will do on Wednesday). I know that, now that I own my own copy, I will definitely be reading this one over and over again. I highly recommend it to anyone is looking for a unique, strangely engrossing, deep read.

Should you check it out? Yes, it’s a very interesting work.

Here the debutante party scene that I find so strangely beautiful. [And what do you know! Both A.J. Cook (who I am happy to say has not forever left Criminal Minds! Though that’s old news), and Jonathan Tucker (who I will always remember as the hottie from The Black Donnellys) are both in the film.]