"The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer" is roughly equivalent to "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" on a four-year bender.
If "Twin Peaks" the television series seemed dark, violent and just plain confusing, don't pick up the musings of its dead homecoming queen. This girl imbibed more controlled substances and indulged in more sexual dalliances than the entire cast of a porno movie on location at a crack house.Released this week by Pocket Books, "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer" is one of several marketing spinoffs (including a cassette tape, pie and coffee) from the mind-boggling ABC series created by eclectic film maker David Lynch and former "Hill Street Blues" writer Mark Frost.
The diary actually is written by Lynch's 22-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and is living proof that the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Jennifer Lynch's first novel is a twisted slice of Americana in which nothing is quite what it seems and sex is never quite making love.
It is vaguely reminiscent of her father's chilling depiction of sexual blackmail in "Blue Velvet."
But Laura Palmer's diary is not cloned from David Lynch films. Rather, it is 184 pages of ruminations about life in a fictional Northwest lumber town as seen by its homecoming queen.
It is written, of course, before her murder, which only further unsettled an already unsettling place to live.
Peaks freaks, grab a pencil. Though the book is billed as containing definitive clues that identify Laura's killer, it's not easy going.
Like the TV series, which ended its first season without disclosing the murderer, the book is crammed with red herrings, confusing twists, oblique references and everything but a simple, declarative sentence that states "Laura Palmer was killed by (whoever it was who dumped her body in that lake)."
And talking to Jennifer Lynch about how to decipher the book is exactly like talking to her father or Frost about the show's reeling plot lines. Which means you never get a direct answer.
Yes, says Jennifer Lynch with a smile, smoking cigarettes in her publicist's West Hollywood office, she knows who the killer is.
Will readers of the book?
"The careful reader will know the clues and who the killer is," she replies.
What about this BOB character in the book and why is every mention of his named spelled in capital letters?
"That's the way it needed to be," she answers.
Have we seen BOB thus far in "Twin Peaks" episodes?
"I should probably let that slide," she replies.
On the subject of herself and on the inner workings of Laura Palmer, the author is, thankfully, less enigmatic.
Jennifer Lynch carries herself with a self-possession that belies her age. In conversation, she refers to her father as "David" and in a clear, but undefensive, way patiently stresses that she alone is responsible for the book.
"I had a job to do and I did it," she says. "It was a tricky situation at first. I wanted to keep my career different from his."
What was the directive from Lynch-Frost Productions when she sat down to write the book?
"Be Laura Palmer," she answers. "I had to basically become her. Laura was a very troubled, very dark girl."
And while the TV series alluded to Laura's darker side, permeated by sex, violence and drugs, there is nothing equivocal in her diary: If it were made into a movie, "The Secret Life of Laura Palmer" would carry an X rating.
Beginning with her 12th birthday and ending days before her death at age 16, the diary chronicles a young girl's descent into cocaine addiction, orgies, prostitution and near insanity.
But sex, drugs and murder clues aside, the book also manages to capture the mindset of a girl caught in the netherworld of puberty.
Laura alternately worships her mother and thinks her uncool, worries about the onset of menstruation and, with a heartfelt conviction available only to teenagers, believes she is the world's sole possessor of such confusing feelings.
"This is about some of the dreams, hopes and fears of any young girl's life," says Jennifer Lynch. "We've all been there. We've all been 12."
But Lynch stresses that the book is not an autobiography, although having David Lynch as a father did make for a somewhat untraditional childhood.
Her parents were divorced when she was a youngster, but she spent much time with her father, who once had a paper route in between making early films such as "Eraserhead."
"I used to have very few people who liked me because my father was strange and we were poor and we lived the art life," Lynch says.