The Moth Diaries is the debut novel

Debut novel

A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...

 of Rachel Klein

Rachel Klein (novelist)

Rachel Klein is an American novelist, translator and essayist.She is the author of the 2002 novel The Moth Diaries. Daughter of University of Pennsylvania economics professor Lawrence Klein and originally from Philadelphia, PA, Klein currently works and resides in Brooklyn, NY with her family...

, published in 2002.

Plot summary

At an exclusively girls' boarding school, a sixteen year-old girl records her most intimate thoughts in a diary. The object of her growing obsession is her roommate, Lucy Blake, and Lucy's friendship with their new and disturbing classmate, Ernessa. Around her swirl dark rumors, suspicions, and secrets as well as a series of ominous disasters. As fear spreads through the school and Lucy isn't Lucy anymore, fantasy and reality mingle until what is true and what is dreamed bleed together into a waking nightmare that evokes with gothic menace the anxieties, lusts, and fears of adolescence. At the center of the diary is the question that haunts all who read it, "Is Ernessa really a vampire

Vampire

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

?," or has the narrator trapped herself in the fevered world of her own imagining?

Film adaptation

A feature film being helmed by Mary Harron

Mary Harron

Mary Harron is a Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter best known for her films I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page.-Overview:...

 is currently in production, and set to star Lily Cole

Lily Cole

Lily Luahana Cole is an English model and actress. Cole's modelling career was launched by a chance encounter with Benjamin Hart in Soho, London when she was 14....

 as Ernessa, Scott Speedman

Scott Speedman

Scott Speedman is a British-born Canadian film and television actor. He is best known for playing Ben Covington in the coming-of-age drama television series Felicity and Lycan-Vampire hybrid Michael Corvin in the gothic horror/action Underworld films.-Early life:Speedman was born Robert Scott...

 as Mr. Davies and Sarah Bolger

Sarah Bolger

Sarah Lee Bolger is an Irish actress. She is known for her role as Princess / Lady Mary Tudor on The Tudors and for her role as Mallory Grace in The Spiderwick Chronicles.-Early life:...

as Rebecca. Commenting on the film, director Harron said: "This is a chillingly atmospheric horror story with real emotional depth. I’ve tried to stay true to Rachel Klein’s novel in the way it re-works and updates the Gothic tradition and the whole notion of girl-on-girl vampires."