![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/11\/laura-palmer-212x300.jpg\")
The Secret Diary<\/em> doesn\u2019t read like a spinoff. It was written by David Lynch\u2019s daughter to chronicle the maturation of the show\u2019s \u201cbeautiful dead girl\u201d trope. Before it, Laura Palmer\u2019s character could only be pieced together through flashbacks and clues. Viewers quickly found out that the poster child dream-girl harbored her share of secrets, from a cocaine addiction to illegal sex work to affairs and, eventually, a dark history of being victim to rape for the majority of her childhood. The reveal mid-second-season furthered the latter, but I won\u2019t relay any spoilers.<\/p>\n The character portrait of Laura Palmer is one both raw and real, capturing the essence of a girl living with trauma, but trying to do good and be happy. Jennifer Lynch accomplishes her likeness. When I mentioned that The Secret Diary<\/em> doesn\u2019t read like a spinoff, I wasn\u2019t dramatizing it. It\u2019s almost as structured and well-written as a typical YA novel, telling a bildungsroman tale without all the gloss and the stereotypes of young, star-crossed lovers and manic pixie dream girls and dystopian wastelands. When it comes down to it, The Secret Diary<\/em> is about one girl attempting to find purpose despite incessant abuse, trying to piece together what\u2019s left of her life in a struggle for identity, independence, and love.<\/p>\n The entries begin on Laura\u2019s twelfth birthday. It starts off pure and innocent, with meditations on having her first period, her first kiss, meeting Bobby, later her boyfriend, but now just another schoolboy that tugs at her ponytails. She writes poetry, takes care of her pony at the stable, tries smoking a cigarette during a campout with her friends in the backyard.<\/p>\n However, the book turns dark fast. Once the truth about BOB, her occult abuser, leaks out onto the page, Laura\u2019s life swiftly spirals into something uncontrollable. At times, it proves hard to read. It\u2019s sad, very sad. Lynch\u2019s prose imbues a strange sensation of relatability and compassion, pity and empathy which is rare to find in similar novels. So much happens to Laura, and\u2014try as she might\u2014she can\u2019t find a grip to which she can hold. Her addiction and her trauma claim her life. She thinks herself utterly hopeless and completely alone in life, not being able to relate to anybody, wholly separate from the world she inhabits. This depression causes her to act out in ways she doesn\u2019t want to, as means to cope with the abuse. She tries and tries to be good despite the bad that\u2019s happened to her and the bad things she does. It\u2019s an unfailingly realistic portrait of a human being torn between bad and good, who makes mistakes and has flaws, but attempts to surmount them and reclaim her life. Overall, it\u2019s a book about the loss of innocence, that foundational age of transition.<\/p>\n Sure, The Secret Diary<\/em> is chock full of references to the show. Any television spinoff is bound to have that. But I hesitate to label it as a spinoff, just because of the stigma behind the term. Calling it so would throw it in a pile of rushed, poorly-crafted commercial fiction that collects dust in discount bins at your local supermarket. The Secret Diary<\/em> is a standalone piece of literature. Jennifer Lynch poured her heart and soul into this project, and it reads as such. I\u2019d recommend the book to anyone, Twin Peaks<\/em> fan or not. Anyone can read it and comprehend the story\u2014the tale of a lost teenage girl searching for meaning in a world that doesn\u2019t want her to is both universal and necessary to tackle. You could read it just to fill in the gaps the show left, or you can read it and actually come out of it with something. Personally, that\u2019s what I think it\u2019s meant to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kyle Labe\/\/Blog Writer The question of \u201cWho killed Laura Palmer?\u201d may have been answered decades ago, but the image of the high school homecoming queen, dead and wrapped in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/orgs.emerson.edu\/undergraduate-students-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2017\/11\/twin-peaks.jpg\")
What\u2019s especially intriguing are Laura\u2019s interpersonal relationships, notably with her boyfriend Bobby and her best friend Donna. Bobby and Laura start off as your typical high school power couple: the quarterback and the homecoming queen. But their rocky relationship is plagued by drugs, affairs, and corruption, turning into an intricate connection that surpasses what\u2019s seen in YA. They become objects of convenience to one another, remaining together only for the company of another person and the cognizance that they may only have each other. It\u2019s devoid of love, but rather full of yearning, a longing for love and affection that they can\u2019t seem to find anywhere. Laura and Donna begin as childhood best friends, inseparable for most of their adolescence, but as the two grow up they slowly drift apart. Laura\u2019s life goes one way while Donna\u2019s goes the other. Laura starts to resent Donna\u2019s \u201cperfect\u201d life, how uncorrupted and pure she remains despite the horrible things that have afflicted Laura. As Laura puts it, \u201cWe\u2019re like anyone else, I guess. We promise that something is forever, when it is really only as long as it takes for us to tire of it\u201d (Lynch)<\/p>\n