The Virgin Suicides

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

It's been only five weeks since I finished Eugenides book, Middlesex, and already I am longing for more of his work. There is something quite familiar about his books - not surprising really since they take place in my hometown, Detroit. But the style feels very comfortable, as if I had heard Eugenides reading his short stories in my high school English class and now get a chance to read the expanded version.

How does one write a book about 5 sisters who commit suicide without making it morose or ugly. If you are Eugenides, you tell it from the viewpoint of the neighborhood boys who worship those girls from afar. It is easy to picture these sweet boys, each in love with one or more of the pretty sisters who live across the street. Each boy happy to be invited to the only party those girls ever throw and devastated to see the youngest drop to her death at  age 13, impaling herself on the metal fence in the backyard.

With one dead, those boys still have four girls to admire and to worry about. And worry they do. The girls are not let out of the house except to go to school. The boys wonder: How are they holding up after the suicide? Are they happy? How do they entertain themselves at home day after day?

When the school's heart-throb appeals to the parents to let the sisters go to the prom, their mother makes them shapeless, high-necked dresses. The sweet boys note that the girls look great anyway and appear to have a good time. But the outing is spoiled. The youngest sister gets drunk, comes home two hours after curfew resulting in the parents pulling them out of school, leaving the sweet boys to while away the hours over games of pool and baseball thinking about how to get the sisters from their captivity. We share the boys' curiosity as they look at the girls with noses pressed to the glass, or fondle a treasured object (a diary, a bra, high-top sneakers) retrieved from the family's trash and, years later, mull over interviews with parents and neighbors.

The boys never determine exactly why the girls commit suicide, but with the trail of breadcrumbs Eugenides leaves us, we can make a very good guess. Eugenides succeeds wonderfully in bringing alive a book on death. It's a sweet, dark book that is not easily forgotten.