Fiction, 1993
In The Virgin Suicides, we follow a group of boys as they grow obsessed with the Lisbon sisters, who live on their street and go to the same school. In huddled conversations with each other, they mythologize the sisters to a purely fantastical degree. Floating like angels In their imagination, the girls fester and grow into first loves. With this more than any other recommendation, I really think you need to watch the film. While Eugenides lays the foundation of the boys' crush and daydreams, Coppola sneaks into the actual lives of the girls. The feeling of reading the book and wolfing the film immediately after–or vice-versa–feels like a boomerang of blonde hair and good words. It is an experience I seek often.
In conversation with The Paris Review, Jeffrey Eugenides said that the inspiration for the novel came from a babysitter who mentioned that she, and her sisters, were under enough pressure to end their lives. This pressure is hinted at in the novel but grows to an unsettling degree when Coppola shows you how the Lisbons live.
The tone in both the film and novel is a peculiar one. It is the feeling of going on a long walk to look through other people's windows or saving the wrapper of a lollipop your crush consumed. It is voyeuristic, ritualistic, sacred, and above all else, painfully innocent. It is also of endless intrigue to me that "Eugenides" is greek for "well-born". In the abyss of etymological literary gossip, the jokes just write themselves.
Film - The Virgin Suicides (Some may say this is a cop-out, I agree to a degree that it is without a doubt, a slight shift of route!)
Song - Angelina - Lizzy McAlpine
exciting!