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The Virgin Suicides / Jeffrey Eugenides

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The title reveals the ending, so there is no surprise, but that is not to say there is no suspense. The Virgin Suicides recounts the story of the Lisbon sisters and the tragic gradual unraveling of their well-structured existence in suburban Detroit of the 1970s. Fate leads inevitably towards the final chapter of the book, which is also the final chapter of their short lives. Cecelia is the first to go (by self-defenestration) and her sudden death seems to set a chain of events in motion that eventually brings all her sisters with her (there is even speculation that Cecelia’s suicide released a contagion that infected her siblings).

The story is told in the voice of the neighborhood boys who shared the same street and the same school with the Lisbon girls, secretly admiring them, mostly from afar, in life as well as after death. The identities of the boys remain somewhat mysterious to the reader, when they, years after the tragic events foretold in the title, reassemble the facts through interviews, realia (“Exhibit no. 59”), newspaper clippings, and personal reminiscences.

This book is a record of suburban dystopia and the disintegration of the American family, a familiar theme in such movies as American Beauty and Revolutionary Road (and the book!). Jeffrey Eugenides is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Middlesex, also an excellent read.
The 1999 movie with Kathleen Turner, James Woods, and Kirsten Dunst is pretty faithful to the book and well acted.

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