The Virgin Suicides (1993) - Jeffrey Eugenides

Written by Jeffrey Eugenides
Read by Nick Landrum
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
Release date: June 6, 2008
Duration: 08:35:50

In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters—beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys—commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life

Publisher’s Weekly
“Eugenides’s tantalizing, macabre first novel begins with a suicide, the first of the five bizarre deaths of the teenage daughters in the Lisbon family; the rest of the work, set in the author’s native Michigan in the early 1970s, is a backward-looking quest as the male narrator and his nosy, horny pals describe how they strove to understand the odd clan….. The title derives from a song by the fictional rock band Cruel Crux, a favorite of the Lisbon daughter Lux–who, unlike her sisters Therese, Mary, Bonnie and Cecilia, is anything but a virgin by the tale’s end. Her mother forces Lux to burn the album along with others she considers dangerously provocative. Mr. Lisbon, a mild-mannered high school math teacher, is driven to resign by parents who believe his control of their children may be as deficient as his control of his own brood. Eugenides risks sounding sophomoric in his attempt to convey the immaturity of high-school boys; while initially somewhat discomfiting, the narrator’s voice (representing the collective memories of the group) acquires the ring of authenticity. The author is equally convincing when he describes the older locals’ reactions to the suicide attempts. …. This is an auspicious debut from an imaginative and talented writer.”

AudioFile Magazine
What if all the pieces in the kaleidoscope were black? Meet the Lisbon daughters. Cecilia is first to end her life, followed not long after by Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese. The girls, shielded from life by overprotective parents, leave everyone wondering–why? …., Nick Landrum makes the ethereal feel real and the unusual, commonplace. Whether voicing the sisters, reading their diaries, or revealing the secrets of “boy-think,” his voice nudges the listener into a strange place that seems oddly familiar. Eugenides’s haunting debut novel gets a top-notch reading by Landrum. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award