Accept. Enjoy. Merge. Glorify. Glorify. Glorify. (Timothy Leary). The Virgin Suicides was the 1993 debut novel by acclaimed American writer Jeffrey Eugenides. Set in a Detroit suburb during the 1970s, the fictional story centres on the lives of five teenage sisters who are raised by fanatical Catholic parents: Cecilia (13 years), Lux (14 years), Bonnie (15 years), Mary (16 years), and Therese (17 years). After the youngest girl makes an initial suicide attempt, her sisters are placed under close scrutiny by the parents, eventually being completely confined to their home. The girls seek to escape their imprisonment but their parents thwart their efforts and isolate them even more from the outside world, thereby destroying their dreams and suffocating their spirit. The girls all commit suicide within a year.

Courtesy of Judith Buss.
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