Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

    Anne Frank. That name alone ought to be enough of a review for this particular work. There is simply nothing like it, and nothing will ever be as genuine as it. You see, the thing about the diary of Anne Frank is that it is so raw, so ethereally unbesmirched that any other war memoir pales in comparison. And I can say that without stirring controversy because I myself am an exiled child.

Anne Frank shares her tale around the early days of the Holocaust until the few weeks before her harrowing death. She is a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl with the same concerns as any other thirteen-year-old girl even today. When her family is forced into hiding, all she could think about was the attractive young man whom they were sharing a household with. This may seem trivial to some, but to readers such as myself, I basked in Anne's youthful optimism. I could loll all day in that little girl's hope, and even the knowledge that this was a non-fiction work (go away, naysayers) could cause my faith in Anne to waver. My only regret is that I cannot read her diary in its original language and marvel at the exact words that she herself took the time to sit down and write. Anne's writings are dated in non-sequential order, and she often leaves long gaps of time before writing another entry, just I often to when writing my own. Thus the fickleness of devotion to writing remains a minor aspect in Anne's diary, a detail small enough but important enough to confirm the validity of her writing. 

What makes Anne's diary remarkable is that it is so candid in nature. This is not a diary that a little girl would want her older sister or father to see, let alone the world and its subsequent generations. Thus, she wrote without reserve and even complained of her mother's persistent nagging and mocked her older (and less attractive, as she does not fail to note) sister. A child's voice is often the most honest yet the most unreliable. At time when Anne wrote, more horrible things were happening outside their very window than having stale toast. Despite this, Anne did eventually become just another casualty of the Holocaust- and oh, isn't one casualty one too many?- yet her diary remains in circulation even today. That little girl with the crush on their housemate's voice resonates throughout the pages of history as the girl who was absolutely radiant with hope- look at that face!- somehow received the most atrocious end.

To her, we say rest in peace. To you, I say your library is incomplete without the single most hopeful book ever to be unintentionally written.

Emma