The Virgin Suicides

"A Catcher in the Rye for Our times" the front cover proclaims. "Oh fan-bloody-tastic" I thought, and may have given it a miss if I had actually brought another book to the hospital with me. Faced with a 4 hour wait for my op (screw removal from my broken left ankle) I thought, "Well I best make the most of it and I'll grin and bear it".

I was wrong, or rather mislead. The Virgin Suicides is not a Catcher in the Rye I would say (since I HATED catcher). I enjoyed the virgin suicides, with a morbid interest, almost like watching a natural disaster on the news. The style maybe slightly similar to Catcher, with the familiar tone of the protagonist. The Virgin suicides, however is a recollection, a fuzzy incomplete tale of the entrancing beauties across the street and their tragic demise, told by an unknown boy, who we never clearly "see".

The narrator and his friends are obsessed with the beautiful, pure and innocent Lisbon girls. Now much older, balding and rotund with middle age, they are still obsessed and recount the tragic year that preceded a mass suicide by three of the Lisbon girls. It starts with the youngest, Cecile's suicide attempt. The book then follows through to Cecile's actual suicide, the rest of the Lisbon girl's turmoil. Through out this we know that the rest of the girls will take their own lives, but we read about their struggles to cope with their sisters' death. The book culminates in the death of three of the remaining 4 sisters in a mass suicide (Mary's attempt being unsuccessful). The final few pages are devoted to the boys attempts to return to a normal life, only to see once more the ambulance at the Lisbon house, and Mary, finally prone, carried out. We stand with the boys, the last ones to see her, who offer her a lighter in the air "it was the best we could do for an eternal flame". The last few pages we deal with the boys growing up and leaving each other. Our narrator; balding, middle-aged sums up, in the boyhood tree house with the "exhibits" of the girls, that the children saved.

The book has a beautiful undulating sub-current that laments the loss of youthful innocence. The elms, that dying of dutch elm disease, play an almost integral role to showcase the passing of time, and the passing of age... from childhood into that infinite gap of adolescence. Lux Lisbon's foray into the sexual promiscuous is part of this, the bubbling current of innocence versus experience.

I really enjoyed this book! Hallelujah, I am back to reading books that I enjoy after the fog of the last three literary adventures.