Tucked deep in the uncanny valley of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, is a street of towering, decaying Dutch Elm trees. Probe deeper, and beneath the tarmac lies a network of sewer tunnels from which a teenage peeping tom can spy a 13-year-old girl bleeding out in her bathtub. A fun house reflection of his native 1970s Detroit, Jeffrey Eugenides’ debut novel The Virgin Suicides chronicles an amorphous set of adolescent boys who pine over the mysterious, alluring, and forever unknowable Lisbon girls: Cecilia (Hanna Hall), whose self-defenestration is the harbinger of a coming plague, and her sisters Lux (Kirsten Dunst), Bonnie (Chelse Swain), Mary (A.J. Cook), and Therese (Leslie Hayman). 
Part of Kicking the Canon — The Film Canon.
Published as part of InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 19.
