The Diary of Opal Whiteley

Michelle Dean, trusted friend of the Hairpin and all-around solid citizen has a captivating blog post at the New Yorker on the weird, wild world of Opal Whiteley and her infamous diary.

Its diction is idiosyncratic (it begins: “Today the folks are gone away from the house we do live in”), but, even to today’s reader, the diary holds a certain charm. It is peopled not only by Opal and her family and neighbors but also by her many pets, most of whom shared their oddly appropriate names with famous artists: a mouse is called Felix Mendelssohn, a pig Peter Paul Rubens, a cow Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And the childlike wonder feels realistic. Its observations come off in the funny way that a six-year-old’s — Opal’s alleged age at the time she wrote the diary — often do: “Potatoes are very interesting folks. I think they must see a lot of what is going on in the earth; they have so many eyes.”

If you enjoy Opal, you will be tremendously fascinated and/or tormented by the story of June and Jennifer Gibbons.