Moth Diaries - Tapa dura

Haunted by the death of her poet father, and coming to terms with the usual trials and tribulations of adolescence, the narrator of Klein's first novel is a boarder in an all-girls school in the 1960s. Less than usual are the series of events that unfold in her diary: the arrival of a new girl, Ernessa, who seems to have stepped out of a Gothic novel; the death in mysterious circumstances of two of the narrator's friends. Are the events connected? The narrator thinks so, eventually believing that Ernessa is a vampire. Klein cleverly leaves the reader in the dark as to what has really taken place, while convincingly portraying the hothouse atmosphere of the school and the voice of the narrator - a voice which combines precocious literary detachment with Gothically inspired imagination. A debut with promisingly subtle depths beneath its entertaining surface.

Writing in the form of a journal this novel tells the story of odd goings-on in a girls boarding school in the late 1960s. The unnamed narrator is a student at the school, she is intellectual and somewhat aloof and associates with an intense clique of girls. When Dora (one of the strangers) is found dead one night, a tragic accident is at first suspected. But then the rumours begin to circulate about Ernessa, the loner of the group. Is she a bad influence? A spoiled brat? Or is she a vampire?