Published in 1993, Jefferey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides is a shocking story of five mysterious Lisbon sisters and about the incident that resided in narrators’ memory that took place many years back in their life. It is really surprising how Jefferey Eugenides’s debut novel is so gripping. Moreover, what’s more astonishing is that the narrators are kept in suspense, is narrated in the first person plural, and the number of narrators is left vague. The narrators are obsessed with those Libson sisters. Eugenides has brilliantly plotted the story making the readers to presume that the narrators were narrating from the perspective of school kids with their rising hormone level while Eugenides in the end of the story, perhaps, last sentence of the story, reveals that the narrator were in their mid-age with thinning hair.
The plot begins with Lisbon family, especially 5 younger sisters (13 years old Cecilia, 14 years old Lux, 15 years Bonnie, 16 years Mary and 17 years Therese). The youngest sister Cecilia attempts suicide by slitting wrist however is saved and rushed to the hospital. With her first attempt gone failure, she finally kills herself by jumping off the 2nd floor window and falling onto an iron fence spike. The adults attend Cecilia’s funeral and become obsessed with the other 4 sisters. They do not know anything more than they figured out spying on those girls. Also, those girls were strictly controlled by their parents and they had to keep everything to themselves.
One day, Trip; teacher at the school Cecilia studied asks the girls’ father to take them out as a group date. Mr.Libson agrees and let them go. Counting the moment as the chance Lux and Trip have sex hiding from the other sisters who are busy dancing. Lux is abandoned by Trip and hence Lux has to return home all alone. Lux has broken the regulation of her family. From that moment, it became the last time for these sisters to go out freely, they were even pulled out of the school. They were all locked up within the walls of the house, the curtains were drawn.
Now being restricted to leave the house, these sisters contacted the boys using light signals and sharing songs over the phone. During this period, Lux began to get involved in having anonymous sexual intercourse on the roof of the house late at night while these boys watch from across the street. After many months, the sisters leave a note for the boys asking help to escape. Now the real mysterious part begins; when boys reach out to help at night, they find Lux alone in the room smoking, she tells the boys to wait for her sisters while she will wait in the car. After a long wait, boys feel suspicious and go around the home to find the remaining sisters. What they find is the body of Bonnie hanging from the ceiling. With great terror they rush up the stairs where they find the other two had too attempted suicide; Mary stuck her head in the gas oven and Therese had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. The suicide sequence does not end here, even Lux has attempted suicide by locking own self into the garage and left the car engine running.
Totally broken into the grievance both Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon move off the house quietly and sell the house and the other belongings and the photos were thrown into the trash. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon was never heard and seen afterward. The neighbors moved on in their life as Lisbon family never did exist. And the boys kept the photos of those sisters picking up from the trash as mementos. Those boys were forever in the grief as they could not forget what they had seen. The reason for the suicide of those sisters was forever a mystery. However, the narrators (back then boys) determine to spend their lives trying to solve the mystery.
I had viewed some of ‘The Virgin Suicides Book Review’ that did not care for what actually makes the book great. I must admit with them too that the story is unusual but the prose it has in it is simply great. You can download The Virgin Suicides ebook freely from the link mentioned below. Tap on the link provided and The Virgin Suicides pdf download will automatically start.
