Reading 1001 discussion

The Lisbon girls all committed suicide within a year of each other and this book is about he impact this had on the community and in particular a group of their male contemporaries, who chorus-style, are the narrators of the book.

I loved the author's writing style, the prose flowed so well. But, I learnt more about teenage boys than I wanted to know. The way they treated the Lisbon sisters was appalling. But then, they were also treated badly by the entire community. Ignored, over-analysed, gossiped about, sexualised... on and on. I vaguely remember watching the movie when it came out. It is nice to know that the sense of confusion I remember is deliberate. Nothing is really explained. Because perhaps the subject matter means the events cannot be understood from the outside. But it still seems a little odd that nobody did anything to counter the abuse from their parents. Maybe things really were different in the 1970s.

In summary, I am glad I read the book. The writing is amazing. But I don't like the narrators!

This book tells a story of five sisters committing suicide within a year. It is also a story of middle class, suburban town where everybody knows everybody. They interact with each other, but they do not truly involve into others' people's lives or care about others.
A lot of themes where covered here: destroyed family, parenthood issues, society response to tragedy etc. What I didn't like was a strong black humor behind whole story, as if making fun of the events all the time. It was just too much for my taste.

2011
The Virgin Suicides a debut novel by Jeffrey Eugenides is the story told by a group of men who were entranced by the Lisbon sisters. It is a story of adolescents in America suburbia in the seventies and the the mundane life lived in streets lined with elms, neighbors who talked to each other and the school years. The five sisters are Theresa, the oldest and brain, Mary the prim and proper one, Bonnie the ascetic, lascivious, Lux and Cecilia the youngest and oddest. The father is a math teacher. Ms Lisbon is controlling and won’t allow the girls to transition from childhood to adulthood. Eugenides writes with such depth. His stories are filled with themes and symbols. I liked Middlesex better but this one is also good. I liked this quote from the last paragraph, “The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness.”

I had read Eugenides' story Middlesex and was really fascinated by it. This first novel is not as deep and wide but it does have a very interesting perspective, in that it is narrated by a group of boys and although the story is about a family of sisters, one never really gets to understand the sister's motives, one can only understand the boys. The boys are truly obsessed by their unknowable neighbors who they watch with binoculars and carry small articles of clothing they have touched. The boys are naive and yearning for not only sexual understanding but for a glimpse into the real and larger world. In this way, the reader is left with the mystery of the girl's suicides just as the boy narrators are but nevertheless gain insight into the coming of age of the boys, and also a look back from the middle aged men that those boys turn into. The whole story takes place in Grosse Point, a suburb of Detroit, and I also in the most subtle way, got a good dose of the demise of Detroit also.

Right from the beginning we know that 5 sisters will commit suicide. We just do not know how they will die. That was what kept me invested in this book.

The Lisbon sisters live in Michigan (near Detroit and/or Canada). Of the five, Cecilia is the first to go. She jumps out of a window and impales herself on a fence. How gruesome.

I had a problem with the book. It both took too long to find out what happened and there was an extra chapter after all the suicides were over that added nothing to the book.

Yes, I finished the book and I am not sorry, but the story leaves a lot to be desired.

PS. Not all the girls were virgins.
PPS. The Lisbon girls were thirteen (Cecilia), and fourteen (Lux), and fifteen (Bonnie), and sixteen (Mary), and seventeen (Therese). Gives you all the names and the chronology.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
4/5 stars

Wow I don’t know what to make of this story, what an imagination. The narration is from an unnamed male who grew up with the girls which some of their observations bordered on creepy. The parents denial and odd way of parenting was hard to engage with at times. I thought the way the apex of the story unfolded was genius.

“It’s very difficult to know what was in those girls’ hearts. What they were really trying to do.”

“Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn’t know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with, …”

“But she had unbuckled us, it turned out, only to stall us, so that she and her sisters could die in peace.”

“Everyone we spoke to dated the demise of our neighborhood from the suicides of the Lisbon girls.”