“We just want to live. If anyone would let us.”
Eugenides, 128
This is one of those books that I can’t tell if I love or hate.
In the end, we only know the Lisbon girls through the unreliable reminiscences of teenage boys. The choice to have their story narrated in this immature and voyeuristic manner adds to the sense that the girls are truly mythic. Reading it from this point of view, one can begin to understand what drove the sisters to suicide. As they were on display for their community, never given enough autonomy to exist as individuals, so they were on display for us.
Is it infuriating that the girls were reduced to this romanticized vision concocted by and for men? Of course. Is that probably the point? Also yes. A potent criticism of suburbia and a statement about the ways that teenage girls are afforded so little dignity and respect so as to become the objects of a community’s perverse obsession.
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