What is it about Anne Frank? I bet that most avid readers have read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl at some point in their lives.  If they didn’t read the book, perhaps they read the play in school or saw the film version.  However one first encounters Anne, she leaves an indelible mark.  In her new book, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, Francine Prose is determined to figure out why Anne’s diary remains so compelling.

Prose’s book is written in four sections: The Life, The Book, The Afterlife, and Anne Frank in the Schools.  Almost everyone knows the basic facts: Anne Frank was a thirteen-year old girl living in Amsterdam, who received a diary for her birthday.  What begins as an ordinary diary, named “Kitty,” turns into one of the most memorable documents of the Holocaust.  Anne, her family, and three other Jews hid from the Nazis in an annex to her father’s office building.  They spent just over two years in hiding, aided by several Dutch “helpers.”  Just as the war neared its end, they were betrayed, arrested, and deported.  Everyone, except Otto Frank, died in the concentration camps.  Anne and her sister died at Bergen-Belsen; Anne was just fifteen years old.

Prose impressively conveys Anne’s life and the journey of her book after World War II, surely one of the most compelling stories of rejection and publication in the twentieth century.  Her central argument is that we should respect Anne as an extremely gifted writer.  She explains that Anne and the others heard a radio broadcast in the spring of 1944 calling for “ordinary documents” of Dutch life during the war to be archived after the war.  Immediately, the people in the Annex thought of Anne’s diary.  From the spring of 1944 until everyone’s arrest in August 1944, Anne rewrote much of her diary with the idea of publishing it as “The Secret Annex.”

Prose meticulously compares Anne’s original version with her rewrites and the edits her father makes to argue for Anne’s craft.  We all remember the diary so well not only because of the extraordinary situation of its creation but also because of the extraordinary talent of its author. Prose’s book is most interesting when she is comparing the versions and demonstrating how Anne’s revisions brought nuanced character description and needed context to the diary of a young girl.

In the section titled “The Afterlife,” Prose describes the making of the play and the film and the shortcomings of both.  She argues that both so thoroughly Americanize Anne that all we seem to remember is the line about “the good” Anne sees in everyone.  Still, Prose concedes that both probably kept the book in print. Without the play and the film, Frank’s diary might never have become a classic in schools. Prose ends with an inspiring reminiscence of her own experience teaching the book at Bard College.

Like many who love Anne’s work, I came to it in school, in eighth grade.  We had a brief excerpt of the play in our textbook.  That lead me to check and re-check the full play out from our local library.  Home alone in the afternoons, I’d create my sets out of our living room furniture and act away.  As I was just discovering the allure of boys, I particularly loved to act out the scenes with Peter.  Like most teens, I was drawn to Anne’s ability to capture all the difficulty of adolescence.  I’m pretty sure that I at least started the actual diary, but, to be honest, I’m not sure that I ever finished it.  Now, having read Prose’s book, I plan to go back and read the original as soon as possible.

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