Jeffrey Eugenides (2013)
Genre
Literary Fiction / Young Adult
Reading Time
240 min
Key Themes
See below
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Haunted by the memory of the Lisbon sisters, a group of neighborhood boys recounts the beauty and tragic end of five lives in 1970s suburbia, forever marked by their suicides.
The story opens with the collective 'we' of the neighborhood boys recalling the first suicide attempt by Cecilia Lisbon, the youngest of the five sisters. At just twelve years old, Cecilia slashes her wrists in the bathtub. This event draws intense curiosity from the entire community, particularly the adolescent boys who live across the street. The Lisbon parents, Ronald and Sara, are devout Catholics and become even more protective and withdrawn after this incident. The boys, already captivated by the beauty of the sisters, begin their long, voyeuristic study, collecting artifacts and piecing together fragments of their lives from afar, trying to understand the mystery of the Lisbon household.
Following Cecilia's first suicide attempt, a psychiatrist recommends that the Lisbon girls be allowed more social freedom. Their parents reluctantly agree to let them host a supervised party at their home. The boys from the neighborhood, including the narrators, are invited. The party is a strange, subdued affair, heavily monitored by Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon. Despite the awkwardness, the boys get their first real glimpse into the sisters' personalities. The evening takes a dark turn when Cecilia, after a period of quiet observation, goes upstairs and jumps out of her bedroom window, impaling herself on the picket fence below. This second, successful suicide devastates the family and further isolates them from the community.
After Cecilia's death, the Lisbon parents become even more reclusive and impose severe restrictions on their remaining four daughters: Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese. The girls are pulled out of school and forbidden from social interactions. The boys, desperate for connection, watch their house constantly. Eventually, Mrs. Lisbon allows the girls to attend the homecoming dance, chaperoned by Mr. Lisbon. At the dance, the sisters are a spectacle, attracting much attention. Lux, the most rebellious, manages to sneak away with Trip Fontaine, the school heartthrob, for an illicit encounter in his car, returning home long after curfew. This act of defiance has severe consequences.
Lux Lisbon's late return from the homecoming dance with Trip Fontaine, after being abandoned by him in a field, enrages her parents. This incident is the final straw for Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon, who completely withdraw their daughters from school and all outside contact. The house becomes a fortress, with the girls trapped inside, visible only through brief glimpses from windows. The neighborhood boys are devastated by this enforced isolation, their fascination growing into a desperate longing. They try various methods to communicate with the sisters, including leaving notes, calling their house, and even sending smoke signals, but their efforts are largely met with silence.
With the Lisbon sisters completely confined to their home, the neighborhood boys resort to increasingly elaborate and desperate measures to communicate with them. They use flashlights to send Morse code signals across the street, play records with specific messages over the phone, and even leave notes and gifts on the Lisbon porch. The girls, in turn, respond with their own cryptic signals: a flashing light, a specific song played on the record player, or a piece of paper slipped under the door. These exchanges, though minimal and often misunderstood, fuel the boys' obsession and give them a fragile sense of connection to the girls they idealize.
Driven by their belief that the Lisbon sisters are suffering under their parents' extreme rules, the boys create a daring plan to 'rescue' them. They arrange for a car to be available, gather supplies, and carefully plan an escape route. Their intention is to help the girls flee the oppressive Lisbon house and find freedom. They believe the sisters are longing to escape and will readily join them. This plan is fueled by a romanticized vision of the girls' situation and their own role as heroic saviors, completely unaware of the deeper psychological turmoil within the Lisbon household.
On the appointed night, the boys put their rescue plan into action. They slip into the Lisbon house through a window that Lux had supposedly left unlocked for them. Expecting to find the sisters eagerly awaiting their arrival, they are instead met with horrifying discoveries. They find Bonnie hanging in the basement, Therese having overdosed on sleeping pills in the garage, and Mary dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in a running car. The boys quickly realize that their 'rescue' mission has coincided with, or perhaps even inadvertently helped, the sisters' collective suicide pact. Lux is the last sister they encounter, still alive.
After discovering the bodies of Bonnie, Therese, and Mary, the boys find Lux still alive, but she then commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage, completing the sisters' pact. The police and emergency services arrive, confirming the tragic deaths of all five Lisbon sisters. The community is left reeling, unable to comprehend the scale of the tragedy. Mr. and Mrs. Lisbon, broken and grief-stricken, quickly sell their house and move away, leaving behind the shell of their former lives and the haunted memories of their daughters. The neighborhood remains forever marked by the suicides, becoming a site of perpetual speculation and unanswered questions.
Decades after the suicides, the collective 'we' of the neighborhood boys, now middle-aged men, remain haunted by the Lisbon sisters. They have carefully collected and preserved every piece of information, every photograph, every rumor related to the girls. They hold regular gatherings to pore over these artifacts, endlessly dissecting the events, trying to find an explanation for the sisters' actions. Their obsession has never waned, it has only deepened with time. They are still trying to piece together the puzzle of the Lisbon girls, forever stuck in the past, unable to fully move on from the mystery that captivated their youth.
The novel concludes with the narrators admitting their ultimate failure to truly understand the Lisbon suicides. Despite their exhaustive research, their collective memories, and their lifelong obsession, the 'why' remains elusive. They acknowledge that the girls, in their isolation and shared world, remain an impenetrable mystery. The boys are left with a romanticized, almost mythical image of the sisters, forever young and beautiful, embodying a lost innocence and an inexplicable tragedy. Their narrative shows the enduring power of memory and the human need to make sense of the incomprehensible, even when no clear answers are forthcoming.
The Protagonist/Victim
Cecilia's arc is brief and tragic, moving from a quiet, troubled child to the first victim of the sisters' collective despair.
The Protagonist/Victim
Lux attempts to find freedom and connection through rebellion, only to be further isolated and succumb to the same despair as her sisters.
The Protagonist/Victim
Bonnie's arc is one of quiet conformity leading to a desperate, silent act of self-destruction.
The Protagonist/Victim
Mary's arc highlights the inescapable nature of the sisters' collective despair, even for the one who initially seemed to defy it.
The Protagonist/Victim
Therese's arc is one of intellectual curiosity stifled by an oppressive environment, leading to a quiet, premeditated end.
The Supporting/Antagonist
Mr. Lisbon's arc is one of increasing helplessness and grief, culminating in his silent departure from the community after his daughters' deaths.
The Supporting/Antagonist
Mrs. Lisbon's arc is one of escalating control and denial, ending in profound grief and the abandonment of her life.
The Protagonist/Collective Observer
The narrators' arc is one of evolving from adolescent infatuation to lifelong obsession, forever haunted by the enigma of the Lisbon sisters.
The Supporting
Trip's arc is brief, serving as a catalyst for the Lisbon family's heightened isolation, and he later reflects on his encounter with Lux.
The novel is narrated by a collective 'we' of neighborhood boys, now adult men, who are trying to reconstruct the events surrounding the Lisbon suicides. Their narrative is subjective, filtered through nostalgia, idealization, and incomplete information. They admit their own biases and the gaps in their understanding, showing how memory is a reconstructive, rather than purely recallable, process. The boys' endless collection of artifacts and their constant re-telling of the story shows the human need to impose order and meaning on chaotic events, even when true understanding remains out of reach. This theme is evident in their painstaking efforts to piece together the girls' lives from scraps, like the contents of Cecilia's diary or the objects they salvaged from the Lisbon house.
“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made you sick inside, in the stomach, the throat, the head.”
The novel's center is the deep, almost religious, obsession the neighborhood boys have with the Lisbon sisters. From Cecilia's first suicide attempt, the girls become mythical figures, objects of an intense, romanticized fascination. The boys project their desires, fears, and understandings of femininity onto the sisters, seeing them less as individuals and more as a collective enigma. This idealization prevents them from truly understanding the girls' struggles and contributes to their inability to intervene effectively. Their lifelong obsession, evident in their adult gatherings to discuss the sisters, shows how powerful and enduring adolescent infatuations can be, shaping an entire generation's collective memory.
“We knew that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love, and even death, and that our job was to protect them--”
The Lisbon sisters' lives are marked by increasing isolation, first due to their parents' strict Catholicism, and then by their complete withdrawal from society after Lux's incident with Trip Fontaine. The Lisbon house transforms from a family home into a literal prison, symbolically and physically cutting the girls off from the outside world. This confinement creates a suffocating environment, leading to a shared, insular world among the sisters that ultimately leads to their collective despair. The boys, observing from across the street, recognize this imprisonment, but their attempts to 'rescue' the girls only highlight their limited understanding of the girls' internal struggles, which were deeper than mere physical confinement.
“It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time.”
The novel explores the abrupt and tragic end of the Lisbon sisters' innocence, beginning with Cecilia's first suicide attempt at age twelve. Their childhood is overshadowed by their parents' rules and the growing weight of their collective despair. The boys, in their nostalgic recounting, lament the loss of the girls' potential and the innocence that was stolen from them, not just by their parents, but by the mysterious forces that led to their suicides. The girls remain forever young and beautiful in the boys' memories, embalmed in their adolescence, representing a lost ideal of youth and a poignant reminder of life's fragility.
“We felt the call to the beyond, the lure of the unknown, the sweet, mournful pull of the suicide.”
The story is told by a group of neighborhood boys, speaking as a single voice.
This unique narrative perspective creates a sense of shared memory and communal obsession. By having a 'we' narrator, the story emphasizes the subjective, fragmented, and often idealized nature of their recollections. It highlights how the Lisbon girls became a collective myth for an entire generation of boys, rather than individuals fully understood. This device also allows for a broader, more speculative approach to the events, as the narrators pool their limited knowledge and theories, acknowledging the gaps in their understanding and the inherent unreliability of memory when trying to piece together a profound tragedy.
Subtle hints and dark symbolism throughout the narrative hint at the tragic outcome.
Eugenides employs pervasive foreshadowing and dark imagery to create a sense of impending doom. The descriptions of the Lisbon house as a 'tomb' or 'fortress,' the recurring motif of dead trees, and the constant references to decay and entrapment all hint at the girls' inevitable fate. Cecilia's initial suicide attempt serves as a powerful foreshadowing of the collective tragedy. This device builds a pervasive atmosphere of melancholy and inevitability, making the suicides, while shocking, feel like the culmination of a long, tragic descent, rather than a sudden, unpredictable event.
The Lisbon house transforms from a home into a symbol of confinement and decay.
The Lisbon house is not merely a setting but a powerful symbol that evolves throughout the novel. Initially, it is a place of mystery and allure for the neighborhood boys. As the girls become more isolated, the house transforms into a 'fortress,' a 'tomb,' and a physical manifestation of their parents' oppressive control and the girls' confinement. Its eventual sale and abandonment after the suicides symbolize the complete eradication of the Lisbon family's presence and the enduring scar left on the community. The house becomes a silent witness to the tragedy, embodying the claustrophobia and decay that ultimately consumed the sisters.
The boys' collective memory and idealization make their account subjective and incomplete.
While the narrators strive for accuracy, their collective 'we' is inherently unreliable due to their intense emotional investment and the passage of time. They admit to filling in gaps with speculation, idealizing the sisters, and projecting their adolescent desires onto them. Their inability to truly penetrate the girls' inner world means their account is more about their own experience of the suicides than the definitive truth of the Lisbon sisters. This unreliability forces the reader to question the presented 'facts' and emphasizes the ultimate unknowability of the girls' true motivations, reinforcing the theme of the elusiveness of truth.
“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your body feel like a thing God could use for his amusement, and how it was constantly on display, not your own.”
— Reflecting on the sisters' lives and the societal pressures on young women.
“It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do call, for them to come back.”
— The neighborhood boys' enduring grief and longing for the Lisbon sisters.
“The Lisbon girls were a breed unto themselves, a species of unattainable beauty, forever enshrined in the amber of our memory.”
— The boys' idealized and almost mythical perception of the sisters.
“We knew that the girls were not like us, that they were not meant for the world, but were meant to be shut in, to be protected, to be lost.”
— The boys' sense of the sisters' fragility and doomed nature.
“A person's memory is a crazy thing. It just ignores a whole lot of what actually happened and makes up the rest.”
— The unreliable nature of memory as the boys try to piece together the past.
“They were just girls who had died, and we were the boys who had been left behind, trying to figure out why.”
— The central mystery and the boys' enduring quest for understanding.
“We felt the girls were trying to tell us something, that their suicides were a kind of language.”
— The boys' interpretation of the suicides as a message or a form of communication.
“The only thing that really changed was the smell of the house, which grew fainter, like a scent fading from a handkerchief.”
— Describing the aftermath of the suicides and the lingering presence of the girls.
“We had never known the Lisbon girls except in the way you know the stars, or the seasons, or a distant country, by their effects.”
— Highlighting the boys' limited and indirect understanding of the sisters.
“They were like the last of a species, beautiful and doomed.”
— A recurring theme emphasizing the unique and tragic nature of the Lisbon sisters.
“We couldn't understand why the girls had gone to such lengths to escape when we were waiting for them, ready to love them.”
— The boys' heartbreaking confusion and unrequited devotion.
“In the end, we had to be content with the knowledge that we had loved them, and that they had not known it.”
— The boys' final acceptance of their unexpressed and unreceived love.
“They were not like us. They were from another planet, another time.”
— Emphasizing the profound otherness and ethereal quality of the Lisbon sisters.
“We realized that the girls had been trying to get away from us, from our world, from everything.”
— A stark realization about the sisters' motivations for their suicides.
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Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American novelist and short story writer. He has written numerous short stories and essays, as well as three novels: The Virgin Suicides (1993), Middlesex (2002), and The Marriage Plot (2011). The Virgin Suicides served as the basis of a feature film, while Middlesex received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in addition to being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, and France's Prix Médicis.
