The Virgin Suicides

Title : The Virgin Suicides

Writer : Jeffrey Eugenides

Year : 1993

Language : English (translated into Indonesian)

It is the first book of Jeffrey Eugenides, and if I’m not wrong, he is the writer of a sensational book, Middlesex. However, the story seems to be far from that love story, since he provides us (the readers) a very mysterious suicides story. And again, if I’m not wrong, the novel itself had been transformed into a movie back years ago.

I’m actually never interested in mysterious fiction, because I love drama more than any other genre of fiction. For me, drama can give us a deeper meaning, lesson, and philosophy so that people who read the drama can get something after reading it. At first, I was skeptical to this novel. And I did not read the book very willingly, I just wanted to have something “good” to read since I missed a very nice classic novel for my business…previously.

The story is about a girl named Cecilia who committed suicide for an unknown reason. Her sisters seem very desperate facing her death. Moreover, their mother attitudes and family policy worsen the aftermath condition of their home. The four sisters are eager to get their normal teenage life, but their mother never gives that because of one, her own strict policy, and two, because of Cecilia’s death.

When they try to rebel and resist, the only thing that they get is just their mother’s anger and stricter family policy. They’re getting more and more desperate. They never give up, they always try to do something to resist their own mother. Lux, the naughtiest girl of four sisters, is the one who rebel so much in many things. She never doubts to do free sex with so many guys, and she never think and is never care about what she’d done. She is the bravest one in front of her mother.

Cecilia’s mysterious death seems to draw the four sisters to be more united. They protect each other, and also protect the memoir of Cecilia. They look stranger in front of their friends, but they also try to look normal. And, because of Lux brave action after the Homecoming Party, the four sisters are banned to live home and to go to school by their mother and that, even make them stranger and stranger for their friends and neighbors.

Well, because a great pressure burdened by their mother, the four sisters eventually take the same way as Cecilia that is committing suicides. They kill themselves by different way. And, even the police, doctor, and the neighbors try to seek the real cause of their decision to kill themselves, the cause was never emerge in surface. It is still mysterious.

Well, I don’t really like the way the writer build the story. Although he is genius enough to make such an incredible plot, but his diction does not support the mystery within the story.

Rating : 2.5