Dangerous events in a mysterious diary
This chilling, dark tale about the bizarre goings-on in an exclusive American girls' boarding school is an intriguing read for older teenagers who like to be challenged and shocked. The events and characters in The Moth Diaries are dangerously real, and Rachel Klein's presentation of the story is clever and compelling.
Published as a teenage girl's private diary, The Moth Diaries is written by an unnamed narrator who is caught up in terrifying events. Going through someone's diary makes the reader feel guilty, and this feeling adds much to the deep sense of unease that makes this book so mesmerising. We shouldn't be reading this, but we can't put it down once we've begun.
The girl at the centre of The Moth Diaries has no name and no identity. We don't need to know who she is to be pulled into her story. She is a student at Brangwyn School, a classy boarding school for the daughters of the rich outside Philadelphia.
An extremely bright young lady, she succeeds at all her lessons and is popular with the teachers, but she keeps herself aloof from most of the other students. She has her own tightly knit group of friends, and that is enough.
She first came to Brangwyn a few years ago after her father committed suicide. Her mother couldn't cope after her husband's death, and the best thing for the young daughter was to attend a boarding school.
She has generally been happy and fulfilled here, gathering around her a small clique of like-minded girls who quarrel, laugh, study, break school rules and argue about books and boys.
Her friends are important to her because there is little else to think about at Brangwyn apart from schoolwork and teachers. There is shy Lucy who is reserved and withdrawn. There is loud Charley who is afraid of nothing. There is Dora, who is deeply into philosophy and wants to talk about nothing apart from the meaning of life. And there is the new girl, Ernessa, who seems to prefer staying in her room to socialising with the other girls.
The diary-writer has one special friend among the girls who hang out together. She is closer to Lucy than she is to the rest of them, but when Lucy begins a friendship with the strange Ernessa, the balance of things tips over into danger.
Ernessa is a mysterious presence who seems to exert a bizarre control over Lucy. There is something malevolent in Ernessa's personality. Is she a spoiled brat or something much more sinister?
The girl starts to record very disturbing thoughts in her diary. She suspects Ernessa of being a vampire and when one of the other girls dies in mysterious circumstances, her suspicions move along a very perilous path. Is Ernessa a daughter of the undead or is the diary-writer trapped in her own unbalanced imagination?
The Moth Diaries delivers shivers and surprises but is it the gothic shocker it seems to be on the surface? There is something much deeper to discover in The Moth Diaries and it is this that makes it an outstanding read.
The Moth Diaries
By Rachel Klein
Published by Faber and Faber
ISBN 0 571 22463 6
