With the long-awaited return of Twin Peaks just a couple of months away, a whole host of ancillary products have recently begun appearing. The show’s co-creator Mark Frost recently released a novelization of the entire saga, before during and after the series, called The Secret History of Twin Peaks: A Novel. Showtime, meanwhile, has made the first two seasons available for streaming, and recently re-released the original trailer of the 1992 movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, ahead of its availability on Showtime next month.
The resurgent Twin Peaks mania has also led to some revisiting of old side projects from the original Twin Peaks era. And one of those, naturally, is the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, the legendarily dark and smutty tie-in novel authored by co-creator David Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer Lynch, in 1990.
Audible announced that this May, it will release a special audiobook version of The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, with Laura voiced by the actress who played her back in the original series and movie, Sheryl Lee. The book is available for pre-order now.
The Secret Diary, adapted from Laura’s diary that functioned as a plot point in the first season of the series, as the diary supposedly held clues as to who had killed the homecoming queen. The diary, which covered Laura’s life from age 12 to her death at age 17, is supremely dark and disturbing, depicting graphic sex, drug use, and sexual abuse by various men, including the demonic possesser Killer Bob; the book even had crucial pages “ripped out.” Jennifer Lynch, who was 22 at the time of the novelization, was said to be the only person besides Frost and Lynch who knew the identity of Laura’s killer; she went on to direct the controversial 1993 film Boxing Helena, which starred Twin Peaks actress Sherilyn Fenn.
Twin Peaks fans will almost certainly flock to this audiobook -- it was a touchstone of the youths of a lot of Twin Peaks fans who were a certain age in 1990 and remember it quite well. Twin Peaks devotees are a loyal bunch, who have done a lot to keep the franchise alive over a considerable period of time. I suspect many will jump at the chance to revisit the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, especially if it’s read by Laura herself.
Twin Peaks premieres on Sunday, May 21 on Showtime. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer can be pre-ordered now.