The Moth Diaries

What an excellent book - one to buy, I think. It will certainly pay re-reading. Although it is written for older teens, it reminded me of The Secret History, and I think the comparison stands up. It is similar in feel, with a definite literary bent, and a gradual building of tension and uncertainty. As in the Tartt book, the reader is never quite sure what is 'real' and what in the over-active imagination of the protagonist.

Is the new girl, Ernessa, evil and a threat? Does she have a strange power over Lucy? Or is it just that the enclosed and fervid atmosphere of the girls' boarding school magnifies the imagination of the narrator?

Klein envelopes the reader in the thoughts and worries of an adolescent girl, and does it so well that, show more even as we know she is being absurd, we feel she may be right. show less

a dark almost modern-gothic kind of tale added in with confusing adolescence and an all girl boarding school. I like this book's play on reality. What is reality? Because every one of us has a different idea of reality ~ a different perspective on the same moment in time. It was weirdly haunting.

Quite a mindbender of a novel! Not really sure what was happening which I'm guessing was the point. Laid on the tortured poet thing a little heavy but it delves into the entangled emotions of a teenage school girl starting a new year and having a new person come in and steal her best friend away from her. Add to that her unresolved issues with her father's suicide (he was a poet) and you have the recipe for some angst upon angst.

My reading of the novel was that Rebecca is severely depressed and in order to cope she has created a fictional world which she keeps alive through her journal. They discuss supernatural fiction at school, and through this she concludes that new weird girl Ernessa is a vampire hellbent on stealing Rebecca's show more best friend, Lucy, and sucking out her life essence. This is somewhat confirmed to Rebecca when Lucy starts to become ill and the doctors aren't sure what's wrong with her. Rebecca believes it is all Ernessa's doing, that she is slowly killing Lucy.

Horrible things happen around the school, a teacher is mauled by an animal, a student falls of the roof, and Rebecca is sure its Ernessa's fault despite no one believing her. As all her friends drift away from her, she becomes more isolated and entranced in her own world not able to see her own madness.

It's one of those stories where it could be interpreted a few different ways, which I enjoy. Keeps you thinking about them long after you've finished :) show less

Dark and beautifully written, “The Moth Diaries” is a story of teenage angst and obsession. The reader finds themselves pulled down into the world of the narrator, only to find upon resurfacing that they have no idea what just happened. When I reached the end, I wanted to read about the same events but with a more reliable narrator. The story was intriguing, but the reader is constantly questioning if what the narrator is saying is actually happening. A book narrated by Lucy or Charely would be intresting.

Pros:
* Epistolary style
* Unreliable narrator
* Gothic horror - think "Turn of The Screw"
* Beautiful prose

Cons:
* Slow build
* Unresolved story points (i.e. Mr Davies)

Because this is the journal of an unreliable narrator who is slowing going crazy, you never really know what has or has not happened.

But you also get beautiful sentences like, "The girl was self-absorbed, but she was also excruciatingly alive, as if had been born without skin."

Thought this would be an interesting read in the weird teenage girls at boarding school tradition but I just found it dull and less clever than it thought it was. The introduction by the main character explaining everything at the start seemed to ruin the whole premise of the book which was 'how much can we trust the narrator?'. I lost interest.

The diary of a teenage girl living at boarding school who develops strange obsessions about her fellow students. I was glad to be done with this one. The whininess of the narrator, together with the lack of plot and rubbishy conclusion made this a painful experience.