The Virgin Suicides is a mosaic of seventies cultural references, from movies to music to the spread of Dutch Elm disease, the World Wildlife Fund and sexual experimentation in suburbia... in this detritus one thing remains standing, either the legs of a giant statue or the last two Elm trees, stripped of their bark. A plaque beneath them reads "I am Donny Osmonde, King of Kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and my hair."
(with abject apologies to Percy Shelley)
On the surface this is the story of five sisters who kill themselves. We know this right from the start. But under the surface this is many things; an elegy for lost youth, an exploration of sexual fantasies, a gloss on seventies culture, a lament for meaning, a conjuration...
It is also the story of the narrators, a bunch of neighbourhood boys who have watched, fascinated, as the Lisbon girls grew up across the road from their tree house, from which they would watch them. They are now middle aged men and are still fascinated by the girls and their untimely deaths. The voice has been compared to that of a Greek chorus but it seems to me to be more that of a single person hiding behind the plural, and one who is not entirely reliable.
