I just finished reading this book a few minutes ago, and I’m a little hesitant to write anything about it just yet. I feel like I need to do some processing first.
Part of the problem is that, with a BA in English, I am so used to reading and analyzing fiction. When you suddenly read a diary written by a girl between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, you need a completely different skill set. I suspect that if my first reading of this book had been twenty or twenty-five years ago, I would have taken it much more into my soul, instead of speeding through the “young girl blossoming into first love” parts. Perhaps I’m just getting old!
Having said that, I found a lot of the book to be absolutely fascinating. The historian in me was in wonder at the first-person account of what it was like to be a Jew in Holland under the Third Reich. The writer in me was thrilled to see Anne’s writing skills blossom, and I found myself looking back to when I first began writing. Above all else, I thoroughly enjoyed her spunk and sense of optimism, and I loved how much she treasured her few glimpses of nature. One thing that I really took away from this book is how much the simple things in life matter a lot more than we give them credit for.
I am glad I read this book, but, more than that, I’m glad that Anne’s father fulfilled his daughter’s wishes and had it published. The underlying thread of the entire diary is that Anne just wanted her voice to be heard, and to be understood. She felt that she would achieve immortality through her writing, and that’s exactly what has happened.
How does a diary’s story end? Does it end with the life of the diarist, suffering of typhus in a concentration camp, in the most miserable circumstances imaginable? Or does it “end” with the wish fulfillment of its author: its publication, and the resulting touching of millions of people’s lives, and an understanding of the Holocaust in the hopes that it doesn’t happen again?
I choose to focus on the second option, looking at this as a somewhat happy ending.
I suspect Anne would, too.
