The Virgin Suicides

A language arts teacher I worked with at Global Outreach writes a blog about books that she's read and what she's learned from them- The Virgin Suicides was one book she wrote about.  I got it at Barnes and Noble and read it in two sittings.

If you might read this book, don't read any further.  Well you kinda know what happens with the first line: "On the morning that the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide..."  There are five girls and they all commit suicide.  It tells you up front the youngest one goes first by slitting her wrists in a bathtub (that ends up being a failed attempt but, no fear, she succeeds soon enough).  This is a strange family.  The father is a teacher and the mother is a homemaker and the girls are severely restricted as to where they can go especially after Cecilia (the first to go) dies.  The story is told by a male peer of the girls who watches the family fall apart from across the street.  The skanky sister, Lux, starts "dating" a guy even though she's forbidden to do so and he talks Mr. Lisbon into letting him and his friends take Lux and her three surviving sisters to the homecoming dance.  After having curfew and other rules drilled in his brain, he surprisingly gains Mr. Lisbon's permission.  With this new development, there's hope that the girls may get to live a real life but Lux misses her curfew and all hope vanishes.

The narrator and his friends can't just sit back and watch the deterioration of the house and those inside of it and so they decide to call their house.  They get to talk to them and through several secret conversations, the girls convince the boys to come help them escape.  One night, after the signal is given, the boys travel across the street in their car that will soon be filled with them and the sisters.  They wait outside but then, after waiting for what seems an eternity, they go inside.  Lux tells them the rest of the girls are finishing packing and she's going to go wait in the car.  They walk around the house and find Bonnie hanging from the rafters, Therese with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside her and Mary with her head in the oven.  They rush out to find Lux but she has already died from the fumes of the car in the closed garage.

So yeah.  I liked this book.  What a downer.  But the whole time I was reading, I wanted to know what happened to each one.  As I was getting to the end I was concerned that there wasn't enough room for Eugenides to give enough space for each sister so I was surprised with the mass suicide.  I liked it because it was interesting to read about four sisters from the point of view of a boy who was just discovering his feelings towards females.  Also, it was a quick read and so I got to feel the satisfaction of finishing a book without putting in a lot of time!