A bunch of middle aged men in a Detroit suburb serve as a sort of Greek chorus, narrating a tragic tale from their teen years as the five Lisbon sisters commit suicide.  Unable to come to terms with their deaths, the boys have grown old obsessing over them.  They've turned the suicides into the stuff of myth and made them the touchstones of their lives.

But what if we readers aren't affected in the same way?  Sorta weakens the narrative structure, huh?

One of the great lies we tell ourselves is that deaths, but especially suicides, have some great secret meaning.  For instance, what really gave the Whitewater scandal legs was Vince Foster killing himself.  On some level, we all "knew" that he had to have died to hide some terrible secret.  But what if he was just a weak, overburdened man who felt like quitting?  What if deaths like his tell us nothing important?  Well, that just doesn't seem fair somehow.  In the first place, we have an understandable desire that the tragedy have some meaning.  But secondly, and probably more importantly, we get a vicarious thrill from these things and don't want to be cheated out of the opportunity to wallow in them.   If we can inflate them with portent, however false, we get to wrap them around us and roll around in them like pigs in slop, while claiming that we're concerned about their broader implications (witness these Columbine H.S. shootings).

Eugenides has basically rendered an extended wallow without even bothering to look for reasons. Give this one a pass and try Ordinary People or Bone (read Orrin's review) instead

(Reviewed:)

Grade: (D) Orrin C. Judd

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