Yet, despite such changes in the law, suicide most remains a hidden, sometimes taboo, topic.

             Unless one has actually experienced a similar mindset as someone who has committed or attempted to commit suicide, it is a very difficult concept to understand. This lack of understanding is thoroughly covered by Eugenides in his novel The Virgin Suicides. In the novel, the adult narrators look back to when they were young boys and witnessed the suicides of the five Lisbon sisters--Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia. Thirteen-year-old Celia goes first by impaling herself. Bonnie hangs herself on a beam. Mary puts her head in the oven. Therese takes sleeping pills with gin. Lux dies in the garage. The narrators go through the story in the hope of understanding the girls' deaths. At the end of the book, the readers have the pieces of the puzzle, "but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptiness mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name" (246). Once again, "All wisdom ends in paradox.".

             Although the girls are mostly confined and locked in their house by their abusive mother, they are allowed to go to the Homecoming dance. After this time, they are once again forced to remain at home, and the boys do what they can to follow their in-home activities. Lux is seen making love on the roof, Bonnie comes to the door most mornings clutching her pillow, Mr. Lisbon loses his high school teaching job, and the house needs more and more repairs. As time goes on, the girls become increasingly pale and ghost-like. They eventually contact the boys to help them escape. When the boys go to the house to rescue the sisters, they instead witness the suicides. Many years later, their story is still unexplained. As Trip staying at a detoxification ranch, and still plagued by the deaths says:.

             Every second is eternal,' Trip told us, describing how as he sat in his desk the girl in front of him, for no apparent reason, had turned around and looked at him.