In the novel The Virgin Suicides, the author Jeffrey Eugenides creates an interesting story that takes place in a typical suburban neighborhood in the United States during the 1970s. The Lisbon family is composed of Mr. Lisbon, a very reserved and passive person who is a math teacher in a high school and Mrs. Lisbon, a strict, conservative and religious stay-home mother, and their five daughters – all one year apart. The sisters are short, blonde, mysterious, beautiful, a little bit chubby, and have an extra tooth in their mouth. The youngest is Cecilia, who is thirteen, Lux fourteen, Bonnie fifteen, Mary sixteen and finally the oldest was Therese, who was seventeen.
The first chapter starts with an EMS truck arriving at the Lisbon's home to rescue Cecilia who had attempted to commit suicide by cutting her wrists while taking a bath. In the hospital, she receives a blood transfusion and is later declared to be out of danger. When asked by a doctor why she had tried to kill herself, she answered that obviously the doctor had never been a thirteen-year-old girl.
Cecilia is a very unique character. She likes to listen to medieval music, wears an old bridal gown, enjoys observing little insects around the house and the way they lived and died, and has a zodiac mobile in her bedroom. Because Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon were advised to not be so strict with the girls and that Cecilia needs to socialize more, they decided to organize a party. During the party, Cecilia, who wore many bracelets to hide her scars from the attempted suicide, did not seem to be very enthusiastic about it; therefore, after a while, she asked permission to go to her bedroom. Then she threw herself out of the window and ended up punctured by a spike in the house fence. This time she succeeded in killing herself.
After Cecilia committed suicide, the Lisbon family starts a long and painful process of degradation. Depression takes over the house and in its inhabitants. The lives of all the characters are never the same. At school, the Lisbon sisters start to isolate themselves from others. They look sad and distant. Mr. Lisbon becomes even more reserved and passive and avoids talking about what happened to Cecilia to anyone. Also, Mrs. Lisbon rarely goes outside the house, and the appearance of the house itself becomes awful. It seems the family members are dying of sadness and despair.
Later on, Lux develops a strange personality and becomes promiscuous. However, life seems more exciting to the girls when Trip Fountaine, a very popular and good-looking guy who was interested in Lux and had already dated her in her home with the supervision of her parents, asks permission for the parents to bring the sisters to the school dance with his group of friends. Again, the mother controls all the details; the way they dress (she herself makes the dresses which are too conservative for the time and for their age) and the time the sisters have to get home. Furthermore, it is the first time they wear perfume, make up and high heels, because the mother had never before allowed them to. After having fun at the party, all of the sisters go back home except for Lux, who gets home later than the others because she spent the night in Trip Fountaine's "company". The moment she gets home, her mother catches her and they talk.
After this day, the girls' lives change drastically. They are obliged to quit school. They rarely leave the house, spending time in their bedrooms together, listening to music and trying to amuse themselves. Lux however, spends most of her nights bringing strangers to the roof where she has sex with them. In this way, the girls start to communicate with a group of neighborhood boys who are also the narrators of the book. These boys are very interested in the Lisbon sisters and observe them constantly, even revealing signs of obsession for every detail that relates to the girls.
More than a year has passed since Cecilia has committed suicide. All the facts still look the same in the Lisbon family. Mr. Lisbon is dismissed from his teaching job. Mrs. Lisbon stays in her bedroom most of the time and does not cook anymore. The house is a mess inside and outside. The sisters still communicate with that group of boys – the neighbors. The girls ask for help. They exchange letters with the boys and call them up letting the boys listen the girls' favorite songs whose lyrics reveal to the boys the girls' real state of spirit-sadness, despair and discoragement. Finally, the boys meet the sisters in their house. The sisters have been waiting for them. Lux lets the boys know that her sisters and her are almost ready to run away from home with them. The boys wait. They hear some noises upstairs, and think the girls are packing their stuff. The boys get tired of waiting until they realize that each of the sisters is, at that moment, killing herself in different ways, and, except for Mary, all of the sisters succeed. Again the EMS truck arrives. The same scene as the opening chapter unfolds. Mary is brought to a hospital. She survives after having put her head in the oven. There was a lot of gas, but not enough to kill her. The suicides have been very well planed by the girls; they wanted the boys to be there at that exact moment.
Time passes. The house is put up for sale. Finally, Mary succeeds in killing herself. Too many sleeping pills this time. The end. At the end of the book, a young couple move into the house that once belonged to the Lisbon family. Nevertheless, there is a question that is asked by everyone, "Why did the girls kill themselves?" Nobody can say for sure.
Mrs. Karafilis, the old Greek neighbor said that suicide was a normal act in her country and she did not understand why Americans pretended to be happy all the time. The Greek people were moody. Were the girls moody, too? Were they repressed? Maybe they all had a virus, the virus of suicide, which contaminated them.
But for other people, they had no reason to do what they did. Nobody will ever learn the truth. The boys, who act as narrators, are still living in the same neighborhood, in the same houses. They look at the Lisbon girls' pictures. They are puzzled; they do not understand what happened. They cannot forget the Lisbon sisters because they still love them and forever will.
The way the author wrote the book was very interesting and very modern for me. This is not the kind of story that one can predict. Instead, the author plays with the sequence of events and with the characters in a very stylish way. The story is very subjective.
There is no right conclusion for the book gives no answers. It is a matter of interpretation. The reader can see the facts according to their reality. Even though, the characters are very unreal, in some way, anyone can relate to at least one of them, mainly because they bring into their personalities, some human characteristics.
The style of the language used in the book is very poetic and dramatic. Some characters have weird names, which makes us realize that the story definitely could not be real. However, the author's technique works very well, for the book really gets the reader's attention. Moreover, the fact that the boys, who were the obsessed neighbors, were also the narrators, makes the book very original and creative. That is a precise word to describe the book - very creative.
