Hello Gentle Reader
If you have been to any bookstore, you always notice that one section. The section maybe called “Well-being,” or “self-help,” maybe even a resource center. Each title is usually about what it says: parenting such ages as new born, the terrible twos/toddlers, children, pre-adolescence, adolescence, young adult, adulthood; how to deal with a dying parent, overcoming grief, taking care of senior(s) or aging parents; how to better yourself, making career changes, how to overcome obstacles, how to deal with your husband’s mid-life crisis, to how to deal with your wife’s menopause – what to know when you’re expecting a child. All of these books are usually (supposedly) written by doctors. Each one specializing in their field, and who cannot make appointments with you, have decided to give you a book, in which to help guide and explain to you how to deal with trying moments of life, and the experiences and wisdom that those experiences bring.
The Lisbon girls of this novel often strike me as the poor prisoners that happen to get caught up into these books traps. Written with the best of intentions but are taken to such a fundamental extreme that any hope of living a normal life for the girls, had been corrupted by the best intentions to hide them from the filth and the dangers of the outside world. The corrupted advertisements. Hormonal urges that would soon befall them or already have. The tears and broken hearts that would come from dating. Teenage social functions were a cesspool of drugs, sexual touching would eventually lead to sex, and alcohol. Mrs. Lisbon the mother of the Lisbon girls was well aware of this. She knew that the teachers and adult supervision was not enough, to prevent or counter act these measures. In her mind a parent such as herself, wishing to keep her children safe and pure from the outside world, she would isolate them from it. Which caused the Lisbon girls in their own right to become ethereal phantoms of feminine mystery that the neighbourhood boys were enticed with.
The neighbourhood boys stuck in the pristine and isolated world of middle class suburbia of Detroit, where the economic world of the auto industry is slowly passing down, and slowly falling, to what would become its current state. All the while though suburbia appeared untouched. The golden summer air provided a angelic halo to the girls blonde hair, and provided them the appearance of saints of beauty. The neighbourhood boys, now middle aged, and fully developed individuals both in character and physical appearance, as well as their understanding of the wider and greater world. With this new found knowledge the narrators of this novel the unidentified almost virtual hive minded narration, as each of them try to piece together the unfortunate mishap that had happened in those thirteen months when they were all just teenagers, and the Lisbon girls, had committed their acts of self-sacrifice. All of them like lemmings plunged to their deaths, like the youngest and oddest sister Cecilia had done before them.
The two groups of this novel, the narrator and the Lisbon sisters, are in both ways, hive minded. Homogenized in their connections to each other, yet each with their own quirks and yet in the end, much like the girls prom dresses, they are forced to conform, and become part of the larger group, where the individuality no longer is available to be seen. Yet their quirks can be seen at times throughout the novel. These separate them from become one entity. These traits allow them to become more and more emotional involved with the reader. It shows them as human beings.
Bonnie at fifteen is shy, and has a devout clerical passion for religion, honouring the shrine to her sister Cecilia. Lux Lisbon fourteen years old is the beauty and sexy sister. The creature that causes all the boys to fantasize about. Her demeanour is sexy, she is adventurous, and yet eventually despite the intentions of her parents becomes increasingly promiscuous. Mary is sixteen, is the prim, the proper and poised of the girls – and perhaps the vainest. In many ways Mary suffers the worst. Therese is the oldest at the age of seventeen is the studious and intellectual sister, fascinated by the world of science. Cecilia is the youngest, at thirteen; she is the mystical, shy and is rather precocious, known by many and even her older sisters as the weird one in the family. Yet her own death kick starts, the tragic events that unfold throughout this novel.
The neighbourhood boys in their adolescence are more objective. They are more difficult to understand. Yet the novel is not about them. They make great detectives though. Conducting interviews. With those involved in the Lisbon case. From teachers, neighbors, friends, doctors, teachers, nurses, the parents themselves. Yet their attempts to understand and comprehend the Lisbon girls, becomes increasingly futile and at best impossible. Their exhibits (1 – 97) become faded, like their memories, and the memories of the girls themselves. Yet their own desires to understand the girls, and their haunting hold on them and their lives, continuous to allow them to ponder the realities of the Lisbon girls, and the lives they once lived.
With his debut novel Jeffrey Eugenides, presents an interesting world of adolescences, one that does not reflect the present. When thinning hair becomes an occurrence or families themselves are started. Yet the past shows great insight into the characters that they themselves had grown into. Their realization how life was never normal at the Lisbon house. How the ‘community events,’ that surround the suburban community never include the Lisbon household. How in a sea of homes, and manicured lawns, snoopy housewives who have an opinion for everything, to mothers who know your own mother, and a greatly pious atmosphere of false virtues, and cardboard sympathies of cards, to the baked cakes that try to show the feeling that one cares; the Lisbon house itself stood out as a prison. A place ruled by the de facto leader Mrs. Lisbon who rules with an iron fist and a fundamental mind in my opinion, whose inability see or realize her own actions had destroyed the world of her own daughters, who in themselves, never were allowed to live lives of their own. Yet the communal activities of cleaning (raking the leaves, the fly-fish problem) all lead to a social event, with Mr. Lisbon as the ambassador to the outside community in which his wife, did not appear in.
With the first attempt underway, the Lisbon parents were forced to really consider the advice of a doctor. They held a social function. To which the neighbourhood boys, were invited. This first attempt at suicide by the ethereal Cecilia, also was the beginning of trying to understand the greatest question of all: why? The first of many theories were presented, after the discovery of Cecilia’s diary was found, to which she remarked on the foreign child, who was the first person on their street to wear sunglasses, fell in love with another. Going so far as to jump off the roof of his relatives home, in proclamation of his love for her. Yet Cecilia’s diary does not betray anything of the matter, simply giving a quick glance at it, before drifting off like a cloud somewhere else. Yet the party soon fell into tragedy as Cecilia final action was taken in a dramatic fashion. From there on the slow descent of the Lisbon household could be seen. Mr. Lisbon’s mind grew more and more estranged from reality. The neighbourhood grew more muted and shocked by the action itself. Yet each person played their part perfectly, and tried to help the Lisbon’s out. Women baked pies. The men went in and tried to dig up the spiked fence. Others gave their criticism behind their curtains.
Yet the prisons had lost its hold, and slowly began to deteriorate. The lives of the girls deteriorate eventually however a bad situation goes terribly wrong. Finally in desperate acts of freedom, the girl’s swan dive into death, and mortality themselves. Trying in any way shape or possible to escape the house. To escape their domineering parents. To run away from the house. Not just sit down in front of a climate mirror, and imagine the outside world. Not to travel in a car, on a road trip that could only in their imagination by looking through catalogues and brochures. Not to feel life or love in only fleeting brief moments that they themselves, had once experienced and now were deprived of.
Throughout the novel the girls had experienced moments of life. That others had experienced as well. Through their domineering mother (for the most part) the girls feared the (not Lux I suspect) concept of all aspects of life. Yet after the prom, even pious clerical Bonny wanted to have that phone call, rung back to her. That string of connection. That desire to be connected with someone else outside of the four walls. In the end however the girls, escaped the oppression of a life no longer worth living, when they could no longer stomach the isolation, deprivation, and inhuman characteristics of the house that they were expected to live under.
I watched the film before I read this book. I would encourage everyone who has read this book to watch the film, and those that have seen the film to read the book. While watching the film, I grew to understand how it all happened, on a slightly superficial level, but it gives a good concept of the dilemma that Lux had endured. The book is great to get the personalities of the other sisters. The film felt preoccupied with Lux and her own adventure, the book gives a great understanding of the personalities of all the girls, and shows them, not as mere shadows of Lux. It also gives a much more vicious look at the life of the girls, and how the house fell apart. But both complement each other nicely.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
