Told in the first person, it relates the junior year in an all-girl's boarding school in the 1970s. Very bright and a minority (one of only three Jews in school, with more than a whiff of anti-Semitism permeating the place), she is still trying desperately (without knowing it) to make sense of her father's suicide. She shares the equivalent of a dorm room with her best friend, Lucy, while across the hall a new student moves in. Enessa--much too sophisticated for sixteen (maybe) with odd habits--like avoiding the sun and hardly ever eating anything at all. Lucy becomes fascinated by the new girl, as does our narrator (once more, without knowing it).
Eventually, people start to die.
What came to my mind reading this book was that here--far more than Twilight--really shows how LMI might have played out if Owen and Abby were teenaged instead of pre-teens. Rather than a little girl clinging to those moments when she could be a child, Abby might well have been a chilly creature. So many girls that age become completely self-involved and withdrawn as the pain of growing up begins to sink in. To be frozen at that stage, when innocence was evaporating while posing has to take the place of experience--how might Abby's story have turned out then? Just as what would it have been like if Owen, instead of sneaking sweets was finding somewhere to smoke cigarets? What would it have taken for that Owen to make the intuitive leap that Abby was a vampire? In Klein's novel, the narrator pretty clearly needs some therapeutic help. Indeed, she looks back at her diary from thirty years before and seems to assume what everyone did--she had a psychotic episode (but, interestingly, never had another).
Some other parallels include the whole idea of sneaking out of windows, a death when someone fell from a great height, a fire, a certain steamer trunk that seems to function as a bed and/or treasure chest of mementos, bullying, teachers who don't understand, religious ritual empty of any real religion, and an important plot point involving a pool.
BTW, it has been made into a movie. You can see some stills and poster art here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 268&type=1