I recently discovered a second-hand store nearby, and with the sun finally hitting a little stronger this week, it felt like the perfect excuse for a walk. Browsing for new old pieces has always been one of my favorite things to do. Here‘s what I found! #UGGpartner #ad
Hard To Be Good
Published in 1987, this collection of short stories was Bill Barich’s first jab at fiction. Before that he released sports literature and travel essays. Most of the stories in this collection are from the early 80s. They were originally written for The New Yorker, which he worked for as a staff writer.
You know when you read something and can’t really place it in a time? When reading them, I thought these stories felt old (in a good way) even though 1987 is not that long ago. Felt a bit like going to a fancy schmancy double shot almond milk frappuccino coffee shop and then someone orders an Americano.
In any case, the characters feel super real and their wrinkly situations ripped out of everyday life. The author describes them in uncomplicated prose and I quickly found myself rooting for them to iron out those creases. I wonder if they were inspired by real people he met.
My favorite sentence is from a story titled “Caravaggio”. It plays in Italy and deals with a nineteen year old American student living in a pension, the people he meets and the conversations they have. Anyway, the sentence I liked is: “That afternoon marked the beginning of my confusion.”
#billbarich #hardtobegood #jinyopsis
The Virgin Suicides.
I first read this book twenty years ago. In fact, I still have the receipt. If you look very closely you can make out the date, 07.04.2005. The Virgin Suicides was Jeffrey Eugenides’ debut novel. Its first chapter appeared in the Paris Review in 1990. He was thirty years old. The complete book was published in ‘93.
The story, set in a sleepy suburb in Michigan in the 1970s, revolves around the lives and deaths by suicide of five sisters, the Lisbon girls: Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese. They are isolated at their home and a group of boys are trying to figure out what exactly happened to them. The whole story is told from their perspective. Reading it for the second time recently, I felt that the book is really more about them rather than the girls. Their obsession and helplessness is described vividly and in colorful language: “Cecilia was weird, but we’re not ... We just want to live. If anyone would let us.”
The movie adaptation by Sofia Coppola was her first feature film. It premiered in Cannes in 1999, she was in her twenties. Eugenides said in an interview that she had left him a message on his answering machine, wanting to make it. They worked closely together and he said that Coppola was very faithful to the book. He said: “If the book had a dream, it would be the film.” The movie is dreamy and slow-paced. The only difference to the book is that perhaps it depicts the girls’ lives in more detail. I really like the movie too, the OST by Air is fantastic.
Fun fact: The author said that the idea came to him when he visited his brother once who had hired a babysitter for his kid. And the babysitter told Eugenides that she and her sisters all had attempted to kill themselves. And that short encounter developed into this book.
#jeffreyeugenides #thevirginsuicides #jinyopsis
I used to live in a very old part of the city. It has narrow alleyways and walls with cracks in them. There’s a pharmacy, a dry cleaner, a shop that sells wigs and ginseng. It‘s a charming neighborhood in the south west of the city. Sometimes I come back to walk around and get inspired. #UGGpartner @ugg
