THE MOTH DIARIES

The outcast/coming-of-age genre often seduces first-time authors and Klein is no exception. The bulk of the book consists of the diary entries of a mentally ill 16-year-old during her junior year at Brangwyn School, an exclusive girls' boarding school, in the late '60s. These are framed by the observations of the same woman, now 46 and healthy, as she looks back on her severely disturbed youth through the pages of her journal. Her father, a poet, committed suicide and her grief-stricken mother sent her away to school because she could not attend to her own pain and her child simultaneously. Her best friend is Lucy, a pale blonde girl who would rather follow than lead. But a new girl named Ernessa worms in on the girls' friendship, causing the narrator to grow increasingly obsessive about Lucy and eventually fearful for Lucy's life. To offset Lucy's wavering loyalty, the narrator turns to other girls for comfort, including rebellious Charley, philosophical Dora, lovelorn Claire and sensitive Sofia. Despite the political, social and wartime upheaval of the era, the school remains an island where these girls play out their own miniature dramas and rebellions: as the narrator puts it, "the rest of the world seems very far away." The diary form and the already self-conscious narrator's increasingly paranoid voice add to the feeling of claustrophobia. Aside from waning curiosity about what is real and what is a figment of the narrator's imagination, most readers will be left with little to hold on to. (July)

Forecast:Klein may find an audience with young female readers who worship at the altar of The Bell Jar (or Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted).