obsession

The Lisbon girls became a symbol of what was wrong with the country, the pain it inflicted on even its most innocent citizens, and in order to make things better a parents' group donated a bench in the girls' memory to our school.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of The Virgin Suicides is that, while the boys -- now 20 years on and men -- narrate the tale of five sisters who take their own lives over the course of one year, they never actually knew the girls.

The boys are obsessed with everything the girls are and are not. They collect used hairbrushes in order to feel closer to the sisters, they use binoculars to peek into their windows. Evidence of symbolism, such as laminated images of the Virgin Mary, are picked up and discarded.

In many ways, the story speaks to a time the modern reader can't know. A time when neighbourhoods meant something, when everyone living along a block had children who were about the same age.

A time when a group of boys could create mysteries in their minds, and sympathize with the creatures of their imaginations, yet not do a thing to help them.

And, yes, I know this is a fictional tale, but where were these children's parents? If this is a neighbourhood, and everyone has communal barbeques and cocktail parties, why didn't anyone step up to help five girls drowning in depression, self-indulgence and ultimately fatal self-mutilation?

Obviously, this is not a tale of the rosy old days. And perhaps this is one question author Jeffrey Eugenides leaves us to answer for ourselves.

Somehow, he writes about five girls' suicides without ever explaining why they killed themselves.

Using the written report of the psychologist tasked with helping them, Eugenides writes, "With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty."

Eugenides barely leaves it to the reader's imagination; he forces the conclusion that overbearing parents drove the girls to suicide.

What I find more complex, however, is what drives these narrator-boys? They are largely unnamed, and it is unclear what use all their exhibits and hypotheses have come to more than a decade after the girls killed themselves.

More than a decade after the boys' obsessions helped the girls do themselves in.

What did the boys get out of it?

happy new year 2

I think I might be one of the worst people in the world for idealism. Almost two months into the new year, I've not yet settled on a resolution (too much pressure, too many failed promises to myself over the years), but I think cutting idealism is an attractive idea.... and why not now, in time for Chinese New Year's?

But before I zap my idealism and kill my romanticism (the two, unfortunately, go hand-in-hand), I happen to have a very nice image in my mind of one day finding a man who will paint a mural for me. In my kitchen, I think. Of Audrey Hepburn, but all artsy like....

I suppose I could just pay someone to do that.... Maybe new, Non Idealistic Trish will imagine that instead.

Anyway, I caught this line in The Virgin Suicides, which I'm still stealing through, and I couldn't help but think how very true it is. The narrator is talking about one of the Lisbon sisters, post-the first suicide, pre-the rest of them.

"She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about."

I still have a hang-up about the way men characterize women.... it probably dates back to the character Jack Nicholson plays in As Good as it Gets. I think men can't help but sexualize female characters far more than is actually realistic. Perhaps I'm a prude, but I guess men love the idea of blending naivete and sexuality to make mystery pie.

Having said that, I think Jeffrey Eugenides creates entirely believable female characters. Perhaps because he's writing from the firmly confused state of the post-adolescent male.

the virgin suicides

Does anyone remember the movie? I don't.... I'm terribly uncool because I'm not the greatest fan of Sofia Coppola (I was bored to pieces by Lost in Translation) or Kirsten Dunst (I continue to believe she was best in Interview with the Vampire).Although, Marie Antoinette moved me a little closer to liking both....

Anyway, I'm in the midst of reading the book, by Jeffrey Eugenides. (Surely I'm at least five years behind everyone else.)

The premise is fascinating; five sisters will commit suicide by the end, the narrator tells us at the start. He even tells us how they die. So the mystery is why. And what's with the Virgin Mary symbolism?

Don't worry, if you're not familiar with the story, I'm not ruining it for you.

The secondary mystery -- at least, for me -- is the identity of the narrator. It's as if the narration is being done by all the neighbourhood boys using one voice....

Read this, from page 43, after the boys get their hands on the youngest girl's diary:

We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

I love this. It's a man's memory on a boy's take on a young woman's mind. The message being that a woman's mind is a mystery that could never possibly be uncovered.