That was Laura, but She's Only a Dream

While walking to and from work lately I've been listening to the audiobook for The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. The Twin Peaks tie-in was first released in 1990 but the audiobook was recorded in 2017 by Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer in the series. The book's better than I remember, I think because when I originally read it in junior high school or high school I saw Laura as a peer. Now, she's around the same age as my students.

The diary begins on her twelfth birthday and ends just before her murder when she was seventeen years old. Wnen I was a teenager reading it, I enjoyed the book up until Laura really starts analysing herself. At the time, I felt it was too self-indulgent. Now it seems quite natural for a teenager with insecurities to write like that. It's almost difficult to judge the Diary as a creative work because any flaws it has can be attributed to the fact that it's supposed to have been written by a character who was a child and not a professional writer. So any flaws can be taken as virtues.

The diary was written by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch, the mastermind behind Twin Peaks. She was 22 years old at the time and therefore could certainly remember with accuracy what it was like to be a teenager. Her father asked her to undertake the project because he remembered her telling him that she fantasised about finding another girl's diary to see if the things going through her own head were things that went through other girls' heads when they were teenagers. So the diary consequently touches on a lot of topics the series does not, like Laura's fears of being laughed at, her self-image, and her preoccupation with sin and punishment. But, of course, Laura's life was not that of a normal teenager. She was systematically abused from an early age by the otherworldly series antagonist, Bob. But even having an abnormal life doesn't mean she doesn't have the normal mental and physical development stages. She, however, has no vantage point to see the difference between what is normal and what is not, something Jennifer Lynch captures really well.

I was surprised by how much more the book ties into the series than I remembered. There's a scene where she meets the Log Lady at a gas station after seeing the gas station in her dream. I wonder if this was the same gas station and convenience store seen in season three and first referred to by Mike in the dream sequence in season one.

Sheryl Lee gives the same brittle yet at times fiery performance that's so captivating in the 1992 film.