Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… long before her four sisters. Lux, in her early teenage years, is the most sexually advanced girl in the local high school. She’s become the object of desire for the local boys.
Living… in a prison of sorts. The Lisbon family is an extremely religious and tight-knit group. Lux’s parents, Ronald and Sara Lisbon, don’t want their daughter to be corrupted by the world just yet, though Lux despairs over her restricted life. “I can’t breathe in here,” she says of her family home.
Interests… boys. Lux’s flirtatious manner and mysterious sexuality have gotten her a lot of male attention. She seems to relish the power that her sexuality grants her.
Relationship Status… single, though she did date the most handsome boy in school, Trip Fontaine. Lux’s parents came down harshly on her after she returned home (way after curfew) from a night out with Trip. Since then, Lux has had to keep her sexual encounters anonymous.
Challenge… getting out from her parents’ clutches. After her sister Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon family tightened their grip on Lux and her sisters, though their tough love is only driving the remaining daughters further away.
Personality… self-destructive, flirtatious, and wry. People are drawn to Lux’s mysteriousness, her half-ironic way of addressing the world.
Get to Know her in...
-
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
-
First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters—beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys—commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.
