The Diary of a Young Girls
Genre: Memoir
Book description (Good Reads): Anne Frank's extraordinary diary, written in the Amsterdam attic where she and her family hid from the Nazis for two years, has become a world classic and a timeless testament to the human spirit. Now, in a new edition enriched by many passages originally withheld by her father, we meet an Anne more real, more human, and more vital than ever. Here she is first and foremost a teenage girl—stubbornly honest, touchingly vulnerable, in love with life. She imparts her deeply secret world of soul-searching and hungering for affection, rebellious clashes with her mother, romance and newly discovered sexuality, and wry, candid observations of her companions. Facing hunger, fear of discovery and death, and the petty frustrations of such confined quarters, Anne writes with adult wisdom and views beyond her years. Her story is that of every teenager, lived out in conditions few teenagers have ever known.
Thoughts
I love this book. Let's make the list
Anna is a preteen girl. A selfish, whiny, self-centered girl who thinks she's so very mature and that the grown-ups should treat her like an older person!
Yes she is a typical teenager.
I had not read this book because, well in school it was not mandatory and well I finally did it. I picked up the audiobook, and it feels like reading the everyday life of a group of people who are forced to occupy the same space, they get in each other's way. They have petty fights, they compare their children because everyone wants to be the best parents. It is a classic extended family reunion.
I felt it more touching not because it describes the atrocities most of the Jews went through but because it describes how the life of those who did not get caught in the first few waves.
It was emotive the way they all mentioned what they feel when they hear about what's going on outside, imagine the way you would feel knowing that you are "safe" or at least temporary much better than those who were in the concentration camps. They heard stories of war, they felt helpless, powerless and for the beginning of their confinement, they all were expecting the end of the war. Their moods swinging depending on how the overall result looked, they feared, they hoped.
What really affects me, is towards the end of the book, they do not have the ending they hoped for, those years hiding, it was not the way they expected it to go. The closer you get to the end, seeing the hope they all have, the way they all go around their lives as normal as they can in the space they have. Living their limitations, fighting over nothing, trying to fall in love, to build friendships, even among all that is happening Anna still manages to rebel against her parents, they love her, they protect her and allow her to grow up as normal as they could.
It is sad because the picture you get is of a real family, and you know the end of that story is not they lived happily ever after. This is rated more on the emotional effect that it has, this is not a historical retelling of any kind, it is not meant to be that. It simply tells the way a young girl lived, the way her mind worked.
It is a diary after all.
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