I’m a big fan of Twin Peaks so this book held a lot of promise for me. It’s obviously well researched and created with a lot of tenderness and care, but the repetitive structure of each interview collected within made the book drag for me. Personally I found it was a slow read without much payoff but I really appreciate the intention put into the interviews by the author.

*I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair an honest review."

I really wanted to give this book a higher rating, but it's not quite what I expected. I think from the description, I assumed it would be essays, or have a more academic approach to talking about Twin Peaks. It's an interview format, which felt a lot like reading a podcast. If it were a podcast instead of a book, it's one I would definitely tune in to listen to -- the interviews just started to drag after a while, and got shorter as the book progressed, which made me wonder why some of them were included at all. There were some interesting ones and some that I was less interested in, mostly depending on the degree of closeness the interview subject had to Twin Peaks. Obviously, the interviews with actors, producers, and showrunners from the series, as well as Jennifer Lynch, were the most in-depth and interesting. Once we moved to the fan base interviews, it got less interesting to read and felt more like the best Twin Peaks podcast I've never heard. Best one of those was Milly Moo, whose Twin Peaks dollies are awesome and I only know about because of the book.

I would only recommend this to hardcore Twin Peaks fans, because for a casual fan, this won't be a satisfying read.

Don't sleep on that podcast idea though....?

This book confuses me a lot. I don't know if I have to take this book seriously or that the writer has done a craft session and made this. The front of the book hasn't got the greatest picture and also inside the pictures could have been better.

I, like many women, have a difficult time processing the abuse that lies at the core of Twin Peaks.

It is not a lighthearted story, as much as the cherry pie and damn fine coffee would lead you to believe. It is a story of trauma, of incest and death and horror far scarier than anything Stephen king could ever come up with.Twin Peaks is, as its heart, the tragedy of a life lost because no one cared to look.

Personally, I have problems with the show (and its “sequel” film, Fire Walk With Me). A whole host of them, in fact, as much as I love Dale Cooper and Annie Blackburn and the quaint, soap opera-y feel of the show as a whole. I have problems with the way people praise David Lynch for doing the bare minimum, for flaunting poorly constructed, stereotypical women and then tossing them into the ambiguity of the void as an excuse to avoid explaining his methods. I have problems with any man who uses abuse as a plotline, because far too often, it is used without care.

So, when Courtenay Stallings’ Laura’s Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks came along, the concept of the show as empowering was infinitely interesting from an academic feminist point of view.

Out October 20th from Fayetteville Mafia Press, Laura’s Ghost seeks to recontextualize the story of Laura Palmer within Twin Peaks as brave and unique, rather than exploitative. It poses the concept of Laura Palmer as a vehicle for women to process their own trauma, and for the world at large to understand the depth and seriousness of familial abuse. Entertainment as an emotional lens has certainly been researched time and again by literary theorists, and Stallings seeks to prove just how deeply women can connect with the story of the poor, murdered homecoming queen...

...But Laura’s Ghost barely even skims the surface.

A certain level of production quality is to be expected from small press releases, but a large portion of Laura’s Ghost feels sloppy. The chapters feel out of order, and what was promised as an analysis of the central topic - Laura Palmer as a lens for feminine trauma - is presented instead as a series of interviews with female Twin Peaks fans that have almost nothing to do with their beloved homecoming queen at all.

Stallings clearly valued quantity over quality in her writing - twenty-nine women were interviewed for the book, and aside from the testimonies of the four women directly involved with the production of Twin Peaks, all of their testimonials begin to run together after the twentieth page. Instead of discussing their individual interpretations of Laura, or presenting each woman’s quotes as features within a larger essay, Stallings reprints what seem to be entire interviews verbatim, where the questions go no deeper than “when was the first time you watched Twin Peaks?”

Oral histories are a tried and true subgenre of nonfiction, but one expects a certain amount of style and tact to come with them. The lack of organization and depth in Stallings’ interviews gives the impression that she has little experience in long-form writing, repeatedly committing the major sin of assuming her audience knows exactly what she’s referring to without any context. Her interviews, while sincere, veer off-topic like an eighteen-wheeler on black ice - a large portion of each interview is spent discussing interviewees’ experience as women in creative fields, without any connection back to the source topic. Any discussion of Twin Peaks is surface-level, and only a few subjects (Gabrielle Norte and Sezín Koehler, the only two women of color featured in the book) manage to bring up active analysis or criticism of the show.

Laura Palmer is lost to a sea of fangirling from the very offset of the book - a generic jingle of “I love Twin Peaks because I grew up with it” that washes her cries out like the tune of a particularly obnoxious ice cream truck. “Twin Peaks as Subversive Fairy Tale”, Stallings’ analysis chapter on the show as a narrative structure, is shoehorned into the book’s conclusion when it perhaps should have been the crux of it all, overlooked in favor of repetitive testimonial. It feels cheap after two hundred pages of the same thing, as if Stallings made a last ditch effort to tie the project together just before her draft was due. Additionally, the inclusion of an essay on Amie Harwick, a Twin Peaks fan murdered by an abusive partner, felt unconscionable and wrong, particularly when it comes to drawing parallels between her and Laura Palmer that cheapen her to nothing more than the equivalent of a fake character.

The only writing that seems to have any merit is a reprint of Willow Catelyn Maclay’s “Northern Star” essay, which provides the analysis of Laura’s position and lack of agency within Twin Peaks from the perspective of a trauma survivor. It is a diamond in the rough, providing the depth and thoughtful commentary that I’d expected from the rest of the book and failed to find. It posits the real reason why so many women see Laura Palmer as a guardian angel, as a symbol of tragedy as well as hope, and carves into the depth of emotion I’d been hoping to see.

This book feels disjointed — like a master’s thesis that someone crammed a handful of extra, unnecessary material into to turn it into a book. It feels disorganized, underedited, and like it can’t quite reach the point it’s attempting to make. It is not a consistent narrative, but rather shifts forms with each chapter, from an oral history to an essay collection to something that feels like Stallings’ publishers didn’t quite give a final copy edit on.

Conceptually, Laura’s Ghost is a brilliant concept - reclaiming a show with a heavily male fanbase as a source of feminine empowerment runs right up my alley. Seeing a feminine perspective on Twin Peaks feels incredibly gratifying, if only to know that it is possible to carve a space out for oneself when it feels impossible as a woman with trauma. The voices of female artists are important now more than ever, and despite its flaws, I appreciate Stallings’ desire to posit Twin Peaks as a space for women, when so many “classic” television shows are gatekept by men who think they know everything. I appreciate her fervor and love for Laura Palmer, and her support and compassion for those who identify with her story.

I just wish she’d executed it better.