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.

Gearing up for White Noise (and Next)

The little I know about White Noise by Don DeLillo comes from the book cover and the first few pages. I see a preoccupation with death in the text and there appears to be radiation or something like it in the picture on the cover. The writing draws me in.

I have been looking forward to reading White Noise for about 6 months. I've put it off because it's a post-modern book, and that made me suspect that I would need a clear head (i.e. no work projects screaming to be done) to do it justice. So as I'm cooking the Thanksgiving dinner, I plan to read the short chapters and enjoy the spaces in-between. No disgusting sexuality as in Lolita and Naked Lunch. No creepy babies or settings as in Beloved or Never Let Me Go (much as I loved both). No cryptic stream-of-consciousness as in The Sound and the Fury. Just a solid exercise in great reading. This book won the National Book Award, and DeLillo was a Pulitzer prize finalist for two other books.

Next, by James Hines

For some reason, the first few pages of White Noise remind me of a book by James Hines called Next. It is about a man living in Ann Arbor, who in a panic when he suspects his girlfriend is pregnant, decides to drastically change his life. One morning he secretly flies to Austin to apply for a job. Arriving early, he spends a few hours following a pretty woman around town as she runs errands. (She's in on the game). As he fantasizes about being with her he relives key moments in his life - especially his love life. His anxiety increases with his reminiscences and as a result his morning becomes more eventful, but he survives it intact and arrives for his interview on time. The book leads up to a big twist and so I'll stop here. Loved the book. I chewed on it for a few weeks afterward - which is my idea of a what good book should do.

What is it about White Noise that reminds me of Next? There is a sense of calm before the storm. Here's to a Happy Thanksgiving and to some relaxing reading time!

Getting a Tour of My Home Town in Middlesex

What a delight for me as a reader: A Pulitzer Prize winning book set in my hometown, Detroit. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides is a fabulous tour of the place I knew as a child and young adult. This tour comes along for the ride as part of a grand tale about finding and accepting one's identity.

The narrator of the book, Cal, is feeling a rebirth coming one. It will be his third birth. The second one occurred at the age of 14 when he discovered that he was not really a girl. Cal is hoping that this third birth will help him come to terms with his unique hermaphroditic self and clear the way for him to have a successful relationship with a women. And good news, that woman just showed up.

This three-generation tale begins with protagonist Cal/Callie's grandparents surviving the burning of Smyrna on the shifting Greco-Turkish border. The grandparents are brother and sister but unaware of the genetics that cause strange mutations to occur in close-blood relationships, they marry and have children. Fast forward twenty years to Detroit, their daughter marries her second cousin and the recessive gene for a hermaphroditic condition comes alive in their second-born child, Callie. The doctor that delivers Callie has poor vision and poor instincts and so no one knows that Callie is not built like other girls.

Eugenides takes his time telling the tale starting in grandparents' village on Mt. Olympus to their escape from burning Smyrna and journey to US, landing as all immigrants do in Ellis Island. We learn about what an immigrant family must do to stay alive during the depression and how prohibition was the right ingredient for a certain small business to thrive. He takes us into the fifties and sixties as a family restaurant comes alive and then is burned to the ground in the Detroit riots. We watch young Callie grow up unaware of her condition, first in historic Indian Village in Detroit and then in upper class Gross Pointe where she watches her friends bloom into beautiful young girls. As Callie's voice gets lower and her body grows tall but remains free of curves, she begins to wonder about herself. She becomes especially worried when she feels the all-too-physical pangs of love for her best friend. An accident lands her in the emergency room, where a surprised doctor sees what no one else before him has seen - that Callie is actually a boy. The reader, who has known  this for 400 pages finally takes a breath.

The last 150 pages of the book describe the weeks and months after the fateful day in the emergency room. Callie takes it upon herself to make the necessary transitions to become Cal without the intervention of parents or doctors by running away to California. He first hooks up with teenage Dead-heads, then makes a living as a freak in a burlesque show. This second birthing lasts about 5 months. Cal is busted and sent home, where he assumes his role of second son in the family. Eugenides' tale ends here. We are spared scenes depicting the taunts of Cal's classmates which he tossed away with a line on page 1. We are also spared the anguish of his young adult years as he unsuccessfully tries to create relationships with women. But we do get glimmers of the third birthing at the beginning of each chapter and share his hope that this birth is a keeper.

Some are calling this a Great American novel ala Huckleberry Finn. One can make a good case for that with the novel's deep look at ethnicity, race relationships, incest and gender identity. Through Cal's family's eyes, we witness the depression, the race riots, the Vietnam War and the hippie era in California. The book's breadth is huge.

I read Middlesex as a breather book between heady Time 100 books. It has done its job and "wiped the palate" clean after my reading Never Let Me Go and watching the film Naked Lunch. I am now ready to pick up Beloved. But I don't mean to imply that Middlesex is a light book. It is a full, ripe novel that, like Ragtime, is a big treat to read.