The Virgin Suicides. Good movie, better book.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Illustration by Dan Park

My love for Jeffrey Eugenides grew to new heights this fall when I read The Marriage Plot. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had waited with bated breath for 9 years after his Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex.

I loved The Marriage Plot as well as Middlesex but I soon realized I had never read The Virgin Suicides. Sure I had seen the Sophia Coppola film when it came out in 1999. But in order to call myself a true fan I needed to backtrack and read the book that started the Eugenidi-mania.

There are certain themes that Eugenides never fails to leave out of his books. The books all take place in his beloved suburbia of Detroit, Michigan. There are often Greek-American characters (to a lesser extent in The Virgin Suicides). And there is bound to be a character or two suffering from varying degrees of depression. Eugenides was born in Detriot to a Greek family and has talked about his own bouts with depression in his numerous interviews. It makes the average reader wonder how autobiographical his books really are?

The Virgin Suicides is one of the those books that effects you so strongly you begin to take on the character's idiosyncrasies. I'm not saying I wanted to throw myself out of a window but I had this overwhelming sense of malaise that I couldn't quite pinpoint.

The book is told from the point of view of the neighbourhood boys many years after the tragic events depicted in the book. And although the book is told through the men's experiences the reader gets a vivid picture of what it's like it be teenage girls living a sheltered life in the 1960s under the watchful eyes of their religious parents. What I enjoy the most about Eugenides is his ear for the female voice. I was much more interested and invested in the girl's psyche than the boys even though the boys do suffer in their own right.

The real trouble doesn't start until after the youngest daughter, Cecilia commits suicide by jumping out her bedroom window and falling on to the fence below. The 4 remaining sisters get pulled out of school, have their rock 'n roll music taken away and eventually get put under lockdown.

What I found really fascinating was the way the community reacted and tried to cope with the initial tragedy. The school administration did their best to talk about depression and teen suicide at school, but ultimately failed. The neighbours did what they thought best and dug up the offending fence. Even the family's priest made his customary visit to the house and was stunned but the state of the place. What everyone fails to address is the infectious sadness that seems to be oozing out of the house and its inhabitants. And it's the communities failure and fear that could be argued what spurs on the remaining deaths.

It's not so much a book about depression or suicide but the mysteries and opression of adolescence. My favourite character is the over sexualized Lux who looks for the love she does't get at home in the "love" of her teenage counterpart. She also has a heavy hand in what happens to her sisters in the remaining events of the novel.

I highly recommend this book but warn you that you might need a pick me up afterwards. And if you know any teenagers perhaps its a good book to read together and prepare for some serious talking sessions.