The Virgin Suicides
First edition
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| Author | Jeffrey Eugenides |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
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Publication date
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1993 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 249 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 26806717 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3555.U4 V57 1993 |
The Virgin Suicides is the 1993 debut novel by American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The fictional story, which is set in Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the 1970s, centers on the lives of five sisters, the Lisbon girls. The novel is written in first person plural from the perspective of an anonymous group of teenage boys who struggle to find an explanation for the Lisbons' deaths. The book's first chapter appeared in The Paris Review in 1990, and won the 1991 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. Eugenides told 3am Magazine: "I think that if my name hadn't been Eugenides, people wouldn't have called the narrator a Greek chorus". The novel was adapted into a 1999 movie by director Sofia Coppola as her directorial debut.
As an ambulance arrives for the body of Mary Lisbon, a group of anonymous neighborhood boys recall the events leading up to her death.
The Lisbons are a Catholic family living in the suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan during the 1970s. The father, Ronald, is a math teacher at the local high school. The mother is a homemaker. The family has five daughters: 13-year-old Cecilia, 14-year-old Lux, 15-year-old Bonnie, 16-year-old Mary, and 17-year-old Therese.
Without warning, Cecilia attempts suicide by slitting her wrists in the bathtub. She is found in time and survives. A few weeks later, their parents allow the girls to throw a chaperoned party at their house in hopes of cheering Cecilia up. However, Cecilia excuses herself from the party, goes upstairs, and jumps out of her bedroom window. She is impaled on the fence post below, and she dies almost immediately.
The Lisbon parents begin to watch their four remaining daughters more closely, which isolates the family from their community. Cecilia's death also heightens the air of mystery about the Lisbon sisters to the neighborhood boys, who long for more insight into the girls' lives.
When school begins in the fall, Lux begins a secret romance with local heartthrob Trip Fontaine. Trip negotiates with the overprotective Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon to take Lux to a homecoming dance, on the condition that he finds dates for the other three sisters. After winning homecoming king and queen, Trip persuades Lux to ditch the group to have sex on the school's football field. Afterwards, Trip abandons Lux, she falls asleep and misses her curfew. In response, Mrs. Lisbon withdraws the girls from school and keeps them home. Mr. Lisbon also takes a leave of absence from his teaching job, so that the family can be together all the time.
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