Bibliographic Information
Publisher: Picador (div.of Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Publication year: 1993
ISBN: 978-0312428812
Reader’s Annotation
The Lisbon family’s lives are changed forever when their youngest member kills herself by jumping out her bedroom window. As the community watches, the remaining four Lisbon sisters fall into a cycle of depression and isolation.
Plot Summary
Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese Lisbon are five sisters living in the 1970’s suburban community of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Their father is the high school science teacher and their mother takes care of their home. The sisters’ lives are the picture of normality until the day the youngest, Cecilia, attempts suicide by slitting her wrists in the bathtub. The community is slightly affected, but neighbors respond more with interest than concern. Several weeks later at a party Mrs. Lisbon allows the girls to throw in order to cheer Cecilia up, the youngest sister excuses herself, climbs the stairs to the second floor of the house, and throws herself out the window. She is impaled on the sharp gate post and dies almost instantly. For the next year, a group of boys from the neighborhood and the rest of Grosse Pointe watch the Lisbon sisters as they descend into depression and isolation, partially caused by their overprotective parents. One night, the sisters ask the boys to help them escape their house. What the boys find when they come to collect Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese will haunt them forever.
Critical Evaluation
The Virgin Suicides was Eugenides’ debut novel, which makes the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of the plot even more impressive. Capturing 1970’s suburban life perfectly, Eugenides creates detailed personalities for each of the five Lisbon girls and their secret admirers, the group of boys across the street. The story is inherently simple: five sisters who are all depressed enough to commit suicide, and who eventually all do just that. However, there are layers of mysterious intentions and actions that complicate this. For example, Lux’s unexplained promiscuity both before and after her parents lock the remaining four sisters up in the house day and night. One is tempted to explain it with boredom or acting out in rebellion, but there is a deeper sadness to Lux that points to another reason. Also, the suicide attempt that arguably started it all, Cecilia slitting her wrists in the bathtub. She is the youngest sister and an action like this would usually be expected from someone older than thirteen. Her depression is intense, even at her young age, and her actions are enough to inspire her sisters to follow in her footsteps after she succeeds in killing herself. This suggests problems with their home and parents of which Eugenides hardly scratches the surface. The novel’s complexity is explained at times, but for the most part merely implied, leaving the reader to wonder about the motives for many actions carried out by the characters.
Author Information
Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1960. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and received an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University in 1986. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published to acclaim in 1993. It has been translated into fifteen languages and made into a feature film. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, The Gettysburg Review, and Granta's "Best of Young American Novelists." In 2003, Jeffrey Eugenides received The Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (2002).
Eugenides is the recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, a Whiting Writers' Award, and the Henry D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a Fellow of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm of the DAAD and of the American Academy in Berlin. After spending some time in Berlin, Eugenides now lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter where he is on the faculty of Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing. In January 2008 he published an anthology, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, the proceeds of which go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago which is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
Source: https://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm/author_number/948/Jeffrey-Eugenides
Genre
Fiction
Curriculum Ties
Health
Booktalking Ideas
Give some statistics on teen suicide and depression, both from the 1970’s when the book takes place and more recent decades. Briefly profile the personality of each sister, and the group of boys obsessed with them. Read the passage where one of the neighborhood boys comes to the Lisbons’ house for dinner to paint a picture of the family before the tragedy. Then give a rating from 1-5 and tell the audience why this is my rating, and take questions.
Reading Level/Interest Age
Unspecified
Challenging Issues
Child Abuse
Death of a Loved One
Depression
Language
Mental Illness
Running Away
Self-Injury
Sexual Content and/or Nudity
Suicide
Preparing for Potential Challenges
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-potential-challenges.html
Why the Item Was Chosen
This book was not written for young adults in particular, but I feel that younger readers could benefit from it for several reasons. First, this is Eugenides’ debut novel and he followed it with two other worthwhile novels. I would most likely include Middlesex and The Marriage Plot in my collection as well. Second, The Virgin Suicides uses the suburban community passive aggressively encourages the reader not to rubberneck when they notice someone is having a legitimate crisis. Teen readers might take this message to heart while reading, and take action the next time someone close to them is in trouble, instead of standing on the sidelines watching until it is too late. Lastly, the simple reason that the main characters are teenagers. Young readers will identify with the Lisbon sisters, the boys across the street, or some combination of both because teenage angst and unrequited love transcend generations to always settle heavily onto the shoulders of adolescents.
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