Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife

by Francine Prose

In Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, Francine Prose, author of Reading Like a Writer, deftly parses the artistry, ambition, and enduring influence of Anne Frank’s beloved classic, The Diary of a Young Girl. Approved by both the Anne Frank House Foundation in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, run by the Frank family, this work of literary criticism unravels the complex, fascinating story of the diary and effectively makes the case for it being a work of art from a precociously gifted writer.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Holocaust, World War II, Literary Criticism, Books About Books

322 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 2009

About the author

Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francine Prose writes such an interesting, absorbing and well researched account of Anne Frank's life, before hiding, during and after. I learnt so much from this book, especially about Anne's life after being captured by the nazis.

This book mentions some film of Anne, only a couple of seconds long but very special to watch. So sad to see Anne alive knowing what we do. There were interesting parts about Anne's time after hiding and about the others from the Annex. There are words from brave Miep who rescued the diary and kept it even though this put herself in great danger.

I liked the fact the author recognised how important Anne's diary was, not just as an observation of a period of history but as a well written account from someone so young. So sad how things are lost, when the annex was cleared how easily the diary could have been thrown away, we don't really know what could have been thrown away in loose papers.

Personally I wasn't very interested in the chapters about the play and the film. The rest of the book was 5 stars for me. I would have also appreciated some photographs, not just of people but of places mentioned.

I would highly recommend anyone who is interested in Anne Frank to read this book. Thank you to Lisa Vegan for recommending this to me and also providing a link to the short piece of film of Anne Frank, this can be found on message 1.

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read book for anyone who’s read and appreciated Anne Frank’s diary in any of its published forms.

I am now eager to read the critical edition of the diary, which includes the revisions made by Anne in her last months before her capture; all 3 versions of her diary are included.

The only edition of the diary that I’ve read is the copy I have that I first read when I was eleven. I would have appreciated it so much more if my first reading had been at age thirteen, but my mother was eager to share it with me. I’m glad that she did and that I have the copy that she bought for me. I reread it several times during my teenage years, getting more from it as I got older. I was never given the opportunity to read Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl or any books about Anne Frank for any class during all my years of schooling.

I’ve read at least a half dozen books about Anne Frank in addition to reading her diary and her Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex book, but I suppose I should have read the Critical Edition of Anne Frank’s diary that contains all 3 versions of it before I read this book. I realized that as I was reading the first chapter of this book. I thoroughly enjoyed this book anyway though, but I do recommend reading the diary in some form before reading this book.

There is so much packed into this book. Prose (I now want to read all her other books) covers Anne’s life, her family’s background, the historical context, Anne as a writer, and she takes a lot of space for this, and it was so interesting. Also, she writes about the making of the play (ah, human nature reared its ugly head there too) and the movie (no wonder I’ve never enjoyed the movie!) She speaks of the legacy including the Anne Frank Museum and other organizations inspired by Anne Frank. She also talks about various reactions to Anne Frank, her diary, and the holocaust in general, including denial, controversy, and the diary and its various subject matter being taught in schools.

I learned that with the exception of the Polish Jewish population (no surprise there) that it was the Dutch Jews that had the highest percentage of their population murdered by the Nazis during the holocaust. I would have never, ever guessed this to be true.

Page 31 had me going to the web to look at the few seconds of the only known video footage of Anne Frank. Several times. I’d never known this video existed.

There are some discrepancies in the information I’ve read in other books and this one, but they’re not of things that are of incredible importance. This author obviously did a lot of research for this book and it really shows.

I really appreciated that Francine Prose shows tremendous respect for Anne Frank, for her as a bright and thoughtful and complicated person, and for her as an exceptional writer. I’m really glad that this book was written and published, and it’s made me want to go back and read the more definitive edition of Anne Frank’s diary.

I also want to add that one of this book's accomplishments is that reading it has given me an even better understanding of Anne Frank than I'd already had.

[Moira]

About the first half of the book is devastating -- detailing Anne's life, her writing, her death, her book, her afterlife. Then Prose writes about the dramatic and cinematic adaptations of Anne's diary, and that's horribly hilarious. The last section of the book isn't as well-structured -- she leaps from Holocaust deniers to school challenges to how to teach the diary -- and depends way too much on the internet (a lot of it is already badly dated: Yahoo message boards?). But the rather lyrical ending earns its slightly purple prose as she describes her young college students closely reading and responding to Anne's actual words. I especially liked her focus on Anne as a writer, and how Anne consciously revised her own diary to make it a work of art, which is why it has such power (and puts Anne in the company of other life-writers such as Mary Chesnut, Anais Nin, L.M. Montgomery....I could go on). Very worth reading.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

How helpful is a review when the reviewer is already predisposed to the subject? From the time of my first reading of Anne Frank's diary when I was a young girl, I've been fascinated by its author's voice and by the fact that the diary even exists, surviving against the odds.

From my adult reading of the so-called definitive edition of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, I arrived at some of the same conclusions Prose did. Though I never actually articulated to myself, though Prose does, that Anne's book is not truly a diary, but a memoir (Anne herself wanted her book to be called Het Achterhuis, meaning "The House Behind.") and that it is the work of a true writer, I did wonder after reading the definitive edition what all the fuss was about over her father supposedly editing out unflattering things about the family from her work -- he didn't, it's all there. In fact, he put back some things Anne herself had edited out while she was writing her draft from her early diary entries.

So, while there was not a lot new to me in Prose's book, it was nice to have my ideas 'validated' by her. Her common sense cuts through so much of the rhetoric Anne's book (and her father, who had suffered so much already) had to endure. (Why criticize the diary for not being a Holocaust document, meaning not being about life in the concentration camps? Critique it for what it is, and much of it is about living in constant fear and terror of being found by the police, not to mention the early descriptions of the increasing restrictions on Dutch Jews before they started to be rounded up.)

The new-to-me stuff, i.e., the behind-the-scenes wrangling (including the watering-down of Anne's intelligent voice) of the stage play and the movie (which I saw a long time ago on TV), while unfortunate, was not surprising, considering this is Broadway and Hollywood we're talking about. But even that has had its upside, as it's led some back to the original source material.

Prose also has a chapter on the Holocaust-deniers who believe Anne's diary is a hoax. None of that is new to me either, though her paragraph about some of these sick people in internet chat rooms hits hard. Alas, constant battles must be waged against this kind of ignorance and hate.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so pleased to be a first reads winner of this book, and am happy to report that it is indeed a worthwhile and absorbing read, one I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about Anne, the context in which her diary was created, and the social history of the cultural phenomenon the diary has become.

Francine Prose states clearly her belief that Anne Frank was a genius, and she makes a convincing case. Most interesting to me was the section on the writing of the diary, which she tells us Anne was consciously writing and revising with intent to publish. I was fascinated to learn that there are three versions of the diary: an A version, which was Anne's original draft, an actual diary recording events as they took place, a B version, which was Anne's revision of her diary, the book she actually meant for publication, and finally a C version, the book that was eventually published that her father Otto compiled using material from both A and B (all three of these versions can be found laid out side by side in the critical edition). Ironically, the material that was restored to the "definitive" edition of 1995 was material that Anne herself cut out of the first draft. Prose feels that Otto has been judged far too harshly, and that many of his choices made the book better. For example, Anne cut out most of her gushing over her crush on Peter (because she was disenchanted with him by the time she came to revise those sections), but her father reinstated the earlier passages. Prose feels that the element of romance made the book more successful, a good thing because anything that spreads Anne's story to a wider audience is desirable, a view I find to be slightly at odds with Prose's own passionate belief in Anne as a self-determined literary artist.

The second half of the book was taken up with the afterlife of the diary, including its adaptation to the stage and screen, and the extent to which these versions detached Anne's tempered belief in the goodness of humanity from the horror of her situation and ultimate death at Bergen-Belsen. A chapter on the sub-culture of the Holocaust deniers who believe the book is a hoax was mercifully brief. This was perhaps the most upsetting part of the book, but an important part, as it reminds us of how imperative it is that the life of Anne and millions of others should never be forgotten.

Prose points out that there are some works of literature that it almost feels wrong to praise, because it would have been far better that the circumstances that produced them had never existed. "Given the choice, we would have been willing to live without the diary if it had meant that neither Anne Frank nor anyone like her, or anyone unlike her, had been driven into hiding and murdered. But none of us was given that choice, and the diary is what we have left. Meanwhile, across the equator and around the world, Anne Frank's strong and unique and beautiful voice is still being heard by readers who someday may be called upon to decide between cruelty and compassion."

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last year I read The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time, motivated by the fact that my son will be acting in a school production of the play (which I finally get to see very soon!). What I enjoyed more than the original book, actually, are some related titles I read that delve deeper into the surrounding historical context. In particular, Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary and Miep Gies's Anne Frank Remembered were fascinating and beautiful.

Francine Prose's Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife is the final Anne-related book on my list to read, and while it is interesting, it's not as brilliant as the other two titles mentioned above. It sounds like a strange criticism, but I almost wish that Prose wasn't quite so big a fan of Anne Frank; the book might have been better and less "geek-out." Prose's technique sometimes follows this kind of line: "Anne was just brilliant at writing about this situation. Let me explain it for you. There: Did you notice how brilliant Anne was?" That's overly simplistic, but it's how I perceived Prose's writing too much of the time, particularly in the section "The Book."

I'm glad I had already read the other books, because Prose assumes that her reader is very familiar with the usual photos and some background information. This book contains no photos at all, so Prose is left to merely describe photos--which is perfectly fine if you know what she's talking about, but probably frustrating if you haven't seen the photos before.

The final section, especially the parts about the play and film adaptations, is kind of depressing, and I felt bad for Otto Frank having to spend the rest of his life wrangling the legend of his daughter.

The Book, the Life, the Afterlife was illuminating at times, but in general the middle-road aim of Prose was not quite what I wanted. I either want the all-the-photos scrapbook approach of Beyond the Diary or the full academic analysis of The Critical Edition. Prose's in-between stance is not quite my style.

[Jessica J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m taking a class on legal issues in publishing. We talk about things like copyright law, libel law, and defamation. It’s not terribly exciting. In fact, it’s terribly unexciting. For one of our class projects about censorship, though, we have to prepare a presentation on banned books. My book? Anne Frank’s diary.

I have very distinct memories of reading Anne’s diary for a book report when I was in seventh grade. Even though I was way too old, I read it curled up in bed with my mom. I had been going through a strange phase where I loved reading Holocaust fiction (is this a normal phase for twelve year old girls, or was that just me?) and I remember feeling so connected to young Anne Frank. The issues she dealt with (aside from, you know, Nazi persecution and being forced to live in a secret Annex with seven other people) really rang true and very much humanized the entire idea of the Holocause for me. I’ve found that this is a relatively common response among the thousands of middle school kids who read the diary each year.

Francine Prose has written an extended critical look at the diary which is, in itself, completely fascinating and absorbing. She begins with the argument that Anne was not just another teenage diarist who one day aspired to be a writer, but rather a wildly talented writer creating a deliberate work of art. I had no idea that Anne had begun rewriting her diary with the hopes that it would one day become a novel of her experiences in the secret annex. When the diary was eventually returned to Anne’s father, Otto, he quickly realized not only her gift but her desire to be published and worked for many years to honor his daughter by fulfilling that desire.

Prose fleshes out her examination with biographical information of Anne, her family, and the other residents of the annex, as well as a look at the diary’s lasting effects and controversies. However, I was most intrigued by the pasages describing Otto’s attempts to edit his daughter’s diary — he chose to cut several passages referring to her budding sexuality and tumultuous relationship with her mother. These passages were gradually restored as “Critical” and “Definitive” editions of the diary were eventually published.

Over the years, Anne Frank has become mythologized, a larger-than-life representation of the horrors of the Holocaust. Prose addresses this hero worship without succumbing to it in her own writing. She presents a portrait of a flawed adolescent whose dreams would outlive her own fifteen short years. A must-read for anyone who found themselves touched by the diary.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can understand why HarperCollins was a little nervous about this book: Prose does not play into the cult of Saint Anne. Rather, she looks at the "diary" (which, according to the evidence, was as much a literary creation - edited, reedited - as it was a documentation of Anne's thoughts and life) as the work of an author learning her craft under extraordinary circumstances.

The version I read, and the stage play I saw, in junior and high school are not the version that Anne wrote. Back then, who imagined that Anne had re-written almost the entire diary? We knew that her father had edited it somewhat, and obviously things are lost and changed when being translated, but Prose points to major changes that many may not be aware of.

Prose also looks at what happened before Anne began writing (was our vision of her, of the Annex, correct?) and what happened both to Anne, the others in the Annex and the diary after the arrest. Knowing that all, except Otto, died wasn't a surprise, although Prose seems to suggest that for many it is. Readers may be surprised to learn that it was not an immediate success as a book - rejected by a great many publishers, not a huge seller when it was published - and that the play and film were so difficult (and acrimonious) to create.

The book humanizes Anne in a way I didn't think possible, and is a definite Must Read to any one also reading the diary.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of it was fascinating. I felt Prose handled Anne Frank's life very well. I love the sections that discussed Anne's actual writing. Those were engrossing. And I like the part where she discussed even the negative legacy of Frank's work.

It was the parts about the play and the movie where I felt she got bogged down. She discusses Meyer Levin's involvement with the play ad nauseum and the actors in the original Broadway production -- none of whom I was familiar with. She could have used some photos in this section.

That's not the weakness of the book though. A different person may find these sections really fascinating.

The weakness of Prose's book is that she can't seem to decide if her book is academic or mass market. And she doesn't walk that line particularly well. Parts of it were too full of minutae and too dry to really entertain a mass market, but the scholarship was sorely lacking if she was going for academic appeal.

Still if you're interested in historical literature, films, Anne Frank, or WWII or the Holocaust this is certainly a useful book to look at.

[Persephone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was ten years old when I saw the play The Diary of Anne Frank on television. My mother explained beforehand that Anne had hidden from the Nazis with her family, but was discovered and sent to a concentration camp. I could tell by the way she said this that this was a sinister thing, but wondered what could be so dreadful about a camp where they made you think hard.

The play must have made a deep impression because for Christmas, my father gave me a copy of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and my mother gave my very first diary. Anne wrote her entries as personal letters addressed to "Dear Kitti"; I decided to address my diary to "Aurora", because when I was ten, I thought that was the most beautiful name in the world.

This past October, during our visit to Halifax to see elder daughter at her university, we dropped into the bookstore while waiting for her to emerge from her morning class. I saw Anne Frank: the book, the life, the aftermath on the shelf and leafed through it, thinking: Oh dear, yet another book about Anne Frank. (I've read a good portion of them.) I bought it, of course.

The book is not so much a series of chapters as a collection of essays. The earlier essays are concerned with Anne's place in history: her stature as a writer(was she an ordinary girl living under extraordinary circumstances, or an extraordinary girl living in increasingly unbearable times?); an examination of what actually happened before and after the Frank family's period of hiding, and how new revelations about the diary still receive heavy media attention. Later chapters examine the diary as a literary work, the initial struggle to publish it, and how it was edited -- surprisingly, largely by Anne herself, who planned to submit it for publication after the war. The book continues and concludes with the fierce feud over the dramatization, how the diary figures in Holocaust-denial literature, the outreach work of both the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, Switzerland and the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam, and the varying degrees of success with which the diary is studied in American schools.

Here's the thing: I resisted this book initially because I thought: What more could I possibly learn? I had the same reaction before watching the documentary Shoah . The answer was the same: when you're dealing with an enormity -- and genocide has to be the best example of enormity there is -- it's impossible to learn it all. For one thing, your brain tends to shut off in the face of the horror. Anne Frank and her diary are sort of an entry, providing something that is imaginable as a link (if we dare to look further) into the unimaginable.

Things I didn't know before reading this book:

Holland was second only to Poland in the percentage of its Jewish population slaughtered (more than three quarters), due in part to the accuracy and efficiency of Dutch records.

Not all of the entries in Anne's diary are addressed to the imaginary "Kitti"; this was a device Anne herself came up with as she re-wrote and edited much of her diary in preparation for eventual publication.

There are three versions of the diary: the "a" version is the original; the "b" version are Anne's revisions, and the "c" version is the one most of us have read, that which Otto Frank, Anne's father and the sole survivor, put together from versions "a" and "b".

The strange, strange story of the creation of the Broadway play and the bitter fights surrounding it.

Francine Prose is very critical of the play and even more critical of the 1959 film starring Millie Perkins. She acknowledges, though, that both brought more readers to the diary and for many, like me, a first introduction to the Holocaust.

I must admit, I have never cared for the film either. There have been some recent interpretations of the Anne Frank story on television that begin to do some justice to the story. For one thing, Anne's caustic views of the Van Daans,whose real names were Hermann and August Van Pels, and Dussel the dentist who was actually Eric Pfeffer, may not have been that fair. Certainly there are those who remembered and loved them who object to their portrayal, particularly in the play and the movie. Prose doesn't mention recent productions such as The Attic (a rather good 1986 mini-series based on the memories of Miep Gies, one of the refugees' faithful supporters), The Diary of Anne Frank (an English 2009 interpretation that clearly tries to portray the protagonists as they were, rather just how Anne depicted them), and my personal favourite. Anne Frank , from 2001 which tells the story from well before the family's retreat into hiding, then takes us unflinchingly to the transit camp at Westerbork, to Auschwitz, and to Bergen-Belsen where Anne finally died, mere weeks before the liberation of the camp.

Is it possible to enjoy a book that touches on the Holocaust? Perhaps not. However, this book is a palatable experience without being cloying or sentimental, and it is certainly fascinating reading.

[The Geeky Bibliophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review coming soon.

[Neil Mudde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having recently traveled to Holland and visiting Anne Frank Huis in Amsterdam, then reading this book I am amazed at the goings on that happened after the diary was discovered left behind by Anne, saved by Miep who took care of those in hiding, by risking her life, and providing food etc.
Ms Prose tells us about how Miep gave the diary to Anne,s Father Otto Frank who realized Anne had written this with the intent of having this published, no doubt at the time of writing she would not have dreamed of the horrific end her life would have.
He contacted publishers in Holland who were not interested as being so close after the war who would want to read this misery, not realizing the conten of the diary written by a 13-15 year old girl, this writing in itself is amazing and shows a great deal of awareness or questions about life.
To make a long story shorter, it was accepted by a New York publishing house, then it was suggested that a play ought to be written about this, several well known playwrights had their hands in creating a play for the stage, using their own stamp or how they felt about things, if they did not agree with some of the statements made by Ann, simply ommitted this, example as a young girl Anne questioned sexuality and expressed this in her diary, some people interpreted this as being too sexual, too frank, others felt it was far too Jewish, imagine the story deals with a Jewish family, which due to the Nazi's belief that Germans were the only pure race wanted to wipe out Jewish people, hence the need for them to hide, as Anne's Sister Margot had received a notice that she was to appear at the Amsterdam Nazi headquarters in order to be shipped off to one of the horrific concentration camps. This is a "must read book" having recently seen were the Frank family hid out,due to a co-worker's an NSber they were reported to the Germans, it is interesting to note that the Germans had 200 police in Amsterdam, all the other work was done by Dutch Nazi or NS members, many of whom were killed after the war, or certainly had a difficult life afterwards, in spite of this were picked up and transported to a concentration camp were Ann died, we need to remember what human beings are capable of, in Ann's case writing as she did, in spite of the reality of the issue, in the case of another Race/Group/Organization forcing their wills upon any other human being, No one is free until we all are,
I was totally absorbed by the book, one needs to read this and get all the details Ms Prose has presented her work in a most interesting manner, I will now go back and read the diary all over again, since according to Ms Prose there are different versions, some have certain parts removed, so I will perhaps try and get them all.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is it about Anne Frank? Why is her diary still read, nay, almost worshipped today?

Francine Prose answers this question to the best of her ability, which is a large pretty large ability.

Prose is not a hero worshipper, and she is not a, at least wholly, a myth despeller. Her book chronicles Anne's brief life as well as the much longer life of Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl. Prose not only makes the case that Frank wrote Literature (yes, with the L), but that she has been disvalued because of her age. Yet, Prose never once lets hero worship get in the way. In fact, I know that she likes Frank as a writer, but I don't think she hero worships Miss Frank.

Prose does dispell some myths, most importantly the editing that Otto Frank did to the diary. In fact, she makes a very good case that Mr. Frank has got a bum rap over the years. In addition, Prose makes very good comments about Edith Frank and Mrs Van Dann.

Prose examines the teaching, censorship, publication, and play and film versions of the diary. In the case of the film and play, she looks at them though two different eyes, that of the child and that of the adult. Prose lacks the rage that seemed to fill Cynthia Ozick's article.


Inicidentally, the film of Anne Frank that Prose provides the website to is also shown in the film Anne Frank Remembered, which is rather good. This book and that movie should be read and viewed in conjunction with Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

[Mary Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this (different paperback edition) when it was published in the fall of 2009 after seeing the author give a lecture on C-Span Book TV. She analyzes the book from the various texts of Anne's original diary entries and her exrensive rewrites in 1944 up to the time the Annexe was raided in August as well as the editing by Otto Frank in preparing the first publication. She also discusses the disservice done to the diary (and to Anne) by both the stage and film productions. Most remember the "most people are good at heart" quotation from the end of the Millie Perkins film, but it is really taken out of context. Anne did consider and believe in the existence of evil as demonstrated by other late entries. It is a great read and well worth the time. It also made me reread the diary which was a completely different experience from my early reads as an 8th grader and also in my twenties.

The book showed up in my Facebook Memories today in a comment to a friend 10 years ago which prompted me to add it to my Goodreads shelves (I wasn't a GR member then).

[Susann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enthusiastically recommend this examination of and discourse on Anne Frank as a writer, the extensive literary merits of her Diary, the effects of the play and movie adaptations, and on teaching the Diary. Prose is passionate about Anne and the Diary and she shows her opinions alongside her impressive research. I thought I already knew quite a bit about Anne and the Diary, but I learned so much more with this book.

I'll save my specific Diary thoughts for my upcoming re-read and review of it. But here are just some of the things that Prose got me thinking about:

- In the section on Anne's characterization of Margot, I began thinking about all that we don't know about Margot and about how siblings often have simultaneous 20/20 and myopic vision with one another, making it so difficult for writers to write accurately about their own siblings - especially when dealing with childhood.

- When Prose, rightly so, pointed out the flaws in the play and film adaptations, I thought back to how those flaws escaped me when I watched the movie as a young teen and I wished I could remember just how the film version changed my view of Anne. I just recently caught a bit of the movie on TV and, although I cringed at the bubble-headed film-Anne, I thought the burglary scene had great dramatic tension. (I had also completely forgotten that the role of Peter was played by the future Tony from 'West Side Story.')

- When Prose discussed how the Diary is taught in schools, I thought about how it wasn't taught at my school and how little formal education I've had about the Holocaust. Sally J. Freedman (thank you, Judy Blume!) playing concentration camp with her friends was my first introduction to the Nazi atrocities. By the time I was 10, I had read the Diary out of my own personal interest. If it weren't for these two literary beginnings, would I have gone on to learn more on my own?

Check out Janet Maslin's glowing review.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a badly needed and tremendously well-done examination of Anne Frank, her book, adaptations of her book, and her place and influence in our society today. I was worried at first at what tone the author might take--there have been enough sappy sentimentalists writing about Anne and "people are really good at heart" and yet I did not want to see DAF ripped to shreds and left to die, either. Prose has found a wonderful balance between the needed criticism and a basic admiration for Anne as a writer and an appreciation of what she achieved.
Prose's explication of the various extant documents that Anne wrote, and the editing done by her father, is the most lucid I've ever read. Her conclusion that Anne was not merely a diarist but in fact an ambitions and talented writer who self-consciously intended her work to be read is utterly convincing. I found most interesting her discussions of the stage play, movie, and surrounding controversies, as well as the place of the work in society today, from peace-promoting ministries to neoNazi Holocaust-deniers, and then ending with Prose's experience with a literate and compassionate college class interacting with Anne's work. A must-read for DAF fans.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prose's book revisits Anne Frank and her legacy, positioning herself from a perspective that takes Frank seriously as a writer, rather than, as the myth tells us, a precocious schoolgirl whose diary was a mere lucky accident of history. As Prose makes plain, Frank approached her writing from the beginning as a deliberate craft; she anticipated it being published after the war and she intentionally revised it and amended it for a broad public. Prose writes:

"Like most of Anne Frank's readers, I had viewed her book as the innocent and spontaneous outpourings of a teenager. But now, rereading it as an adult, I quickly became convinced that I was in the presence of a consciously crafted work of literature. I understood, as I could not have as a child, how much art is required to give the impression of artlessness, how much control is necessary in order to seem natural, how almost nothing is more difficult for a writer than to find a narrative voice as fresh and unaffected as Anne Frank's. I appreciated ... her technical proficiency, the novelistic qualities of her diary, her ability to turn living people into characters, her observational powers, her eye for detail, her ear for dialogue and monologue, and the sense of pacing that guides her as she intersperses sections of reflection with dramatized scenes.

"I kept pausing to marvel at the fact that one of the greatest books about the Nazi genocide should have been written by a girl between the ages of thirteen and fifteen--not a demographic we commonly associate with literary genius."

Following a close reading of Frank's diary, Prose traces its legacy, from Miep Gies' effort to preserve the pages (in hopes of returning it to Anne after the war); to the controversy that clouded Otto Frank as he made choices about publishing his daughter's writing; to the tumultuous rise of film and Broadway adaptations of the diary that have, of course, presented an altered image of Anne Frank. Prose also touches on those who doubt the veracity of the diary; those who fiercely preserve its legacy, along with the infamous Annex; those who use the diary as an international peacekeeping tool; and those who teach (or try to teach) the diary in schoolrooms.

I received the book as a Christmas gift from my grandmother--who is preternatural in her ability to pick out books that I'm eager to read--and read it hungrily. I felt relieved by Prose's stance that takes the diary seriously as a work of art. Her case for Frank as both an ambitious and talented writer, rather than an incidental one, is convincing. I appreciated the breadth with which she approached the "afterlife" of Anne Frank, as well as the rich context she uncovered--including writing about Frank from the likes of Bruno Bettelheim; Philip Roth, John Berryman, and many others. She also pays particular attention to how the Frank line about "people being really good at heart" has been mutated and decontextualized beyond belief. And I found myself following up on a few of Prose's references--to see, for example, a preciously rare film clip where the real Anne Frank appears (a clip that struck me dumb). In short, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife brims with ideas, and I found a lot of joy navigating them.

But.

Something is missing.

For the lack of anything better, I have to call it insight. Prose's book is full of fascinating information, and its stance is original, but the narrative moves laterally and feels, ultimately, like a series of compelling anecdotes. I kept wanting Prose to dig deeper, beyond merely laying out the facts of Anne Frank's 'book, life, and afterlife', and to bring her own bright mind to the significance of these things. I wanted her to wrestle with contradictions, to get her hands dirty in this messy history, to embed herself within this narrative. But she only moves partway towards that: her personal voice is present--and her love of the diary is especially palpable--but not much beyond summary emerges.

Consider these final paragraphs from the chapter called "Denial" in the "Afterlife" section of the book:

"A Google search using the words Anne Frank Holocaust denial first turns up pages of legitimate sites about Holocaust denial, then descends into a vortex of bigotry and hate. A more direct route is via Anne Frank Hoax, hoax being a buzzword and a coded entry into the world of defiant racism.

"On Yahoo, there's a list of Anne Frank chat rooms, each with a slogan hinting at what may be found at the end of one thread or another. The group that logs on to explore "The fictional life and times of Anne Frank, the young lover of Herr Adolph Hitler" is closed to new members. and membership is required to join the discussion on "Anne Frank--The Truth"--the truth apparently being that "Mr. Frank betrayed his own family to escape justice." This theme has some currency, attracting yet another group under the rubric, "Anne Frank was betrayed by her own father, what more could you expect from the Jews?" The majority of the chat rooms have more obscene and violent slogans, and share graphic fantasies about Anne's sexual kinks, her enthusiasm for oral sex, and her fondness for showing her breasts.

"What makes it all the more frightening is that these groups twist every mention of Anne Frank into new evidence that the diary is a fraud. For them, the very idea that a brilliant girl would keep a daily journal of her time in hiding and then go back and revise it because she wanted her book to be published is final, irrefutable proof that the Holocaust never happened."

It is compelling (and frightening) information that Prose lays before us. But I felt frustrated that the chapter ended here, with paraphrase of her internet searches rather than propelling forward from this information to offer something original to her own thinking. (This is a tendency that Prose often tipped into throughout this book.) She might have looked into who, exactly, is behind these groups. She might have questioned why the idea of the "brilliant girl" who revised her book is satisfying to these myth-ologists as proof of the Holocaust as a supposed hoax. She might have dug into how the rise of the internet has propagated hate related to Anne Frank, and compared that to how it traversed the world pre-1990s. Prose misses an opportunity to transcend, here and elsewhere. As a result, an interesting book felt thinner than it might have been.

And here's the thing I realized as I finished the book: this is my ongoing trouble with Francine Prose. The Anne Frank book is the fourth title by Prose that I've read; I've also read Gluttony; The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired; and Blue Angel. Again and again, I'm drawn to Francine Prose's fascinating ideas; I'm drawn into her clear way of presenting intriguing places and people and ideas. I will likely finish whatever book of her's that I pick up. But I will be somewhat disappointed that each book--at least drawing from what I've encountered so far--flirts with depth without actually diving in.

Take Gluttony, for example, which was part of the New York Public Library's 'Seven Deadly Sins' series. In it, Prose spends most of her time discussing her bewilderment that gluttony would be named a sin, particularly given that its more generalized counterpart--greed--is also one. Why is the specific act of overeating, or eating with gusto, picked out for special notice as a sin? How does it resonate with a contemporary America so obsessed with food and dieting?

These are the brilliant questions that Prose raises. But her response felt underwhelming. In the book's concluding chapter, she spends a great deal of time quoting the wise M.F.K Fisher's defense of gluttony. The chapter's final lines read like so:

"Over the centuries, our notions of gluttony have evolved along with our ideas about food and the body, about society and the individual, about salvation and damnation, health and illness, life and death. However one praises or condemns this problematic and eternally seductive deadly sin, one thing seems clear: the broad, shiny face of the glutton has been--and continues to be--the mirror in which we see ourselves, our hopes and fears, our darkest dreams and deepest desires."

To me, it all seems too generalized to resonate. What came before wasn't enough to infuse these lines with singularity. And granted, this book is a mere 100-page thing; I shouldn't expect it to be all-encompassing. But I wanted more. This brief book could have held more.

I was left with questions that begged asking, questions that Prose seemed to skirt. Could gluttony as a sin be specifically addressing the peculiar shame of eating more than we need in a world where others starve? Could gluttony be a sin, over and beyond greed, because it leads to imbalance in our bodies, or because it reveals a lack of reverence for our physicality and for the earth that grows our food? Is there a real reason why gluttony is not something we would characterize as a Top Seven sin today, something that reveals a notable chance in today's society from the ones that came before us? Prose elides these questions. She rather affirms eating as a joy (and I agree with her) in the face of gluttony as a historic sin, and that's that.

The trouble with Francine Prose is that there's no follow through. She has the most wonderful ideas, she brings together far-reaching and thoughtful literary references, but it just doesn't go much further than "isn't it interesting." And it is interesting. Which is why I very well may read another Francine Prose book, despite what I discuss here. But if I do, I'll likely be nagged by the persistent wish that she'd push harder, that she'd analyze more, that she'd welcome more nuance head-on. I want her books to move not just laterally, but also longitudinally: multi-directional ideas rather than ones that flatline.

Prose is a very prolific woman, and an intelligent one. Maybe it is yet to be.

(Review originally published on Isak (www.isak.typepad.com)

[Karen A. Wyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone interested in Anne Frank's diary, this book will be a fascinating read. (Note: the term "diary" is an oversimplification, given that she rewrote much of her original diary with a view toward possible publication after the war.) Its primary focus is how the diary came to be published, published in more places, dramatized, and publicized. Along the way, it touches on the lives of Anne, her family, and those who helped them. It spends more time chronicling the strange and sad saga of the man who championed the diary, expected to write the play, became obsessed with writing the play, and ended up in an increasingly intense and bizarre feud with Otto Frank and others. There is also a good deal of discussion and criticism of the ways the diary is often taught in schools, and the extent to which readers and teachers focus on the "uplifting" rather than the tragic and historical aspects of Anne's story.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first part of the book devastated me in a way I was not expecting, as Prose revealed details of Anne's life and death I'd not previously known. The second part fascinated me, as it explored Anne the writer. I struggled a bit with the third part of the book, as it seemed to get bogged down in minutiae of the struggle over who gets to tell Anne's story and how that story is told, but it was still very interesting to learn about how Anne's work continues to live on.

[Talena · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth analysis of Anne Frank's diary and the movie and play based on the diary.

[Daphne Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive, soulful study of Anne Frank as a gifted artist and a historian of one of the darkest periods
In Western civilization.

Anne wanted to be pure of heart, and to see beauty and nobility even as she lived in the direst of circumstances in what amounted to a prison. In some ways, she was quite ordinary as she navigated the perplexing terrain of adolescence. She faced it with the kind of probing curiosity that characterized her passion to find meaning and miracle in the tedious routine that sustained life in the annex.

The author moves from the personal Anne Frank as a child-become-woman seeking to perfect her craft, into a history of the book itself. Otto Frank’s devotion to his daughter and commitment to giving her work a voice is quite touching. As it evolves into iconic story through the book’s publication, then the Broadway stage play and later as a major film, we see the evolution of conscious in a public still raw from the war itself. The move to idealize Anne as a saintly (distant) figure while simultaneously dismissing her diary as the babbling of a child will hold meaning for feminists who still long to find a voice. The anti Semitism that pervades the conflicts about the “Jewishness” that (to some) must be downplayed to avoid offending audiences will smack of ongoing anti-Semitism (and otter isms) that continues to plague our culture. The depiction of Anne’s sexual development and erotic feelings has been pegged by conservatives as pornographic, precipitating the book’s being banned from a number of schools and libraries. And of course there is the Holocaust itself, denied or minimized or blamed on the Jews themselves, ironically by most often conservative Christians.

Anne’s work holds something for everyone. Those who are easily offended will find an abundance of sources for offense. Those who seek to know more about the historical context and the lives of persecuted Jews and those who helped them will find great food for thought. And those who seek meaning in the midst of suffering, who simply want to know this remarkable young woman will be left with a sense of awe and mystery about the wisdom that lives in the secret lives of others.

A rare glimpse into a iconic book for our time..

[Cari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars is maybe a little harsh, but half-stars aren't an option here and as the second half of the book (focusing on the play and movie versions, including all the backstabbing and intrigue involved) gets muddled and bogged down, I can't quite bring myself to give it four stars.

Prose shines in her analysis of the Diary itself, including Anne's maturation as a writer, the rewrites, and Otto's handling of the material when it passed into his hands after the war. Focusing on Anne the writer (and thus Anne the human being) instead of Anne the saint was refreshing and long overdue, even if her assertion that Anne was a child prodigy is a bit sketchy. (I find it contradictory to call Anne a child prodigy with one breath and then insist she was a mature individual during the revision process, even an adult as Anne viewed herself, with the next.) Overall, Prose did a wonderful job with this section. I just wish she had done more with it, because I feel she could have taken her analysis further. (And if it was concern over the length of the finish product, I would vote in favor of cutting most of the second half altogether.)

When the book begins to tackle the play and movie versions, the book slows down and gets somewhat lost, like Prose got so involved in the names of actors and the intrigue that she forgot what she had originally set out to do with this work. The main thesis--Anne the writer--gets lost amidst all this unnecessary information, oddly proving the point Prose is making about the disintegration of Anne's image after death and post-Diary. I could have done without it, because I simply don't care about whether the actresses who played her were any good or if one's man's obsession with bringing the Diary to American audiences drove him insane.

What I did care about was Anne, her growth as a writer, the Diary itself and the changes it went through before eventual publication, and the impact of both book and the image of Anne Frank on post-war conscience. The Book, the Life, the Afterlife provides that excellently, even if it did leave me wishing for more.

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book Francine Prose reveals what is likely a surprise to many of us who have read the book published as Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl - it is not, strictly speaking, a diary (i.e., entries written in chronological order and faithfully retained as such). Anne Frank furiously rewrote her original diary entries, beginning a few months before her family was discovered by the Gestapo in the Annex in which it had been hiding, in the hopes that her diary would someday be published. Otto Frank, Anne Frank's father, further edited (largely judiciously, in Francine Prose's opinion) Anne's diary entries to form what became Diary of a Young Girl. Thus, there is version A, Anne Frank's original entries dated chronologically; version B, Anne's rewriting of the diary; and version C, the version further edited by Otto Frank, drawing upon both versions A and B, and published as Diary of a Young Girl. (For the truly devoted, The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition includes all three versions of the diary.)

Francine Prose shows how Anne as a writer matures over the course of two years by comparing passages originally written by Anne at age 13, at the beginning of her family's stay in the secret attic, against those same passages as rewritten by Anne at the age of 15. She argues that the Diary is literature and not of interest merely because of the fate of its author.

In examining Anne Frank's legacy, Francine Prose comes across as fair-minded while at the same time fiercely protective of Anne Frank's image. She mourns the "Americanization" (upbeat-ization combined with oversimplification) of Anne Frank through the play and movie while recognizing that both media introduced Anne Frank's life, and ultimately the diary itself, to a much larger audience.

Reading this work brought back all those feelings I had when reading the Diary originally: a sense of loss and grief and of course what could have beens had Anne Frank not died at Bergen-Belsen - and realizing, through Francine Prose's skillful exposition of the Diary and its afterlife, just how many others have felt the same.

[Alex Templeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fantastic, and fascinating. It not only appeals to the reader (such as myself) who is interested in Anne Frank, but who is also interested in the appreciation of talented writers, with a little human psychology thrown into the mix. Before I read this book, I did not know (or, at least, did not remember from any prior reading that I'd done) that Anne had done many revisions on her diary, in the hope that it would able to be published as a historical document of wartime, once the whole business of war was over. The diary that WAS published and is now known worldwide as "The Diary of A Young Girl", in fact, was a combination of Anne's drafts, edited by her father. Prose writes about the diary from the perspective of a literary critic, and an appreciative literary critic at that. She presents numerous arguments about why the diary, despite having been written by an adolescent girl, should be taken as a serious work of literature, and its writer as a serious author. At times, she directly compares Anne's original versions to the revised versions, and it is clear this is a true writer at work. This, perhaps, more than even reading the diary itself, made me feel sorrow for Anne's loss: she was not only a fellow adolescent girl (at one time), but we shared the passion for writing and revision during our adolescence. Maybe we could have been friends, across space and time. Many girls feel that same sentiment, but its only after reading about Anne as a writer that I felt that acutely. I also found the discussion of what happened to Anne's book after publication--the movie, the plays, the classroom lessons--fascinating. The major thread of that story is that the dark truths of the diary are often watered down in order to make it more appealing for public consumption. But, as Prose notes, the paradox is that those who might criticize the watering down would be the same ones who would want the story told to multiple audiences. Highly recommended to anyone who has ever had an interest in the young woman or the diary!

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was never assigned The Diary of A Young Girl in school - I either picked it up myself or a teacher suggested it to me, right around fifth grade. And my fascination with Anne and her circumstances, with the differences between her tiny world and the world-changing events surrounding her story, and with the lessons we can take away from her words, has stuck with me ever since.

Perhaps it's because I read her diary outside of an academic setting, but I've never thought about it as a literary classic. I've always thought of it as non-fiction, as fact, so it never occurred to me to consider the writing, the tone, the level of story telling. Which I suppose is why Francine Prose is an award winner writer, a literary critic, and an English professor, and I am not.

I've never seen either the play or the movie based on the diary, and I can't say the story of adapting and creating them has made me any more interested. The poor characterization and over dramatization sound uninteresting - and the choice of tone sounds unsettling. The story of Anne Frank, and the larger story of the Holocaust, the story that she has come to represent for so many people, is not a comedy.

I particularly enjoyed Prose's look at the different messages people take away from their encounters with the diary. Is Anne a symbol of hope, as her famous quote about believing in the good in people would have us think? Or is she a reminder of the horrors that human beings can perpetuate, as she herself pointed out? Can she be both? Does minimizing her to one or the other - to any single message at all - diminish her, ignore her humanity, allow us to ignore the terrible times she lived through?

I don't know. But it's worth thinking about.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm surprised that this book has received such a warm reception. Prose does a good job of pinpointing the editorial decisions that made Anne a great writer. The side-by-side comparisons of the different versions are enlightening. However, it's also abundantly clear that Prose lacks that eye for style that she so reveres in Anne. The book bumbles along with thoughts introduced and then left in the wind as Prose picks up some other unrelated idea about Anne's words. At times, I found myself disagreeing completely with Prose's interpretation of the characters of the secret annex.

I also couldn't believe my eyes when I read the following sentences: "I can't quite stifle the skeptical thought that, given the persecutions and pogroms that have transpired in that region of Eastern Europe, teaching certain Ukrainians to be anti-Semitic is a bit like trying to teach cocker spaniels to fly." Prose falls prey to the over-written, heavy-handed metaphors that she criticized in Anne's writing pages earlier. Worse yet, Prose's metaphor conveys a certain bigotry that's completely antithetical to the work she's reviewing.

I agree with others that the work fails in identifying itself as either academic or popular and in doing so, fails on both fronts. It remains an interesting work, but this is only due the the fascinating nature of Anne's own writing and the legacy of those who lived in the annex.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prose discusses Anne Frank's life, her work as a writer, the versions of her diary, and what happened after the publication of the diary. Prose is at her best when discussing Anne as a writer; I didn't know about the various versions of the diary, or that Anne had revised it (which seems somewhat obvious, in retrospect).

The sections on the play get bogged down with details about the controversy about the writing; Prose acts as though the reader of the book is already familiar with the people involved. The author's strong objections to the characterization of Anne in the play and movie is grating, as though because Prose understands Anne as a writer, she knows everything about Anne as a person. I don't quite know why Prose can't see Anne as both someone who can write well but who would also say "Whee!" when the workers below leave for the day and she's free to move about. It's particularly jarring after Prose discusses Anne's attitude toward her mother.

The section at the end about how Prose would teach the diary and how she did teach her class at Barnard come off as a bit self-congratulatory. If she had left off after the discussion of the movie, the book would be stronger. Even so, the book offers a fascinating glimpse into the writing and publication of Anne Frank's diary.

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anne Frank’s Diary “even more mysterious and fundamental than Augustine’s…the conversion of a child into a person” (Philip Roth). Read it in junior high? Saw the play? Forget all that, read this book, a fascinating review of her life, the writing of the diary, and its afterlife. The author makes the strong case for Anne Frank’s talent as a writer and for the diary as an important work of art. Anne Frank revised the diary for publication after they hear on the radio the Dutch government in exile calling for citizens to preserve letters and diaries for a post-war legacy. The diary, which couldn’t get a publisher at first, was promoted by a deranged writer, Meyer Levin, who grew more obsessed with it, convinced he was the only one who could adapt it for the stage. Carson McCullers was asked to write the play, but declined due to poor health. Dennis Hopper was originally considered for Peter, and Audrey Hepburn for Anne for the movie. The book gives Anne Frank the seriousness she deserved.

[Ginny Messina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a little surprised by how much I loved this book which is about Anne Frank’s family, her diary, the story of how it came to be published and the play and movies that were based on it. I expected the parts about Anne and the diary to be interesting, but not the rest of it. The book is just packed with fascinating information and insights, though. I put it down several times to check out videos on the web—those of the movie, and most compelling of all, the rare 10 seconds of footage of Anne before she went into hiding. I had actually seen that before at the Anne Frank Museum, but there is something about it that is so riveting and heartbreaking.

It’s been many years since I’ve read the diary and much I didn’t remember—plus a whole lot more I didn’t know. I’m looking forward to reading the Critical Edition of the diary (or the Definitive edition? I get them mixed up.)

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful close-reading of The Diary that further reveals Anne’s amazing artistry—character development, dialogue, suspense, revision, self-reflection and a growing maturity. The perfect book to finish reading just the day after a visit to the Anne Frank House. I was enthralled by the analysis of the controversies and challenges that arose from the writing of the play and subsequent screen play and film production. So much to consider that I hadn’t ever thought about. I particularly loved her suggestions for teaching the memoir in schools. Especially, how to avoid glossing over the epic tragedy of the Holocaust by focusing on Anne’s optimism. The sad irony is that she had such optimism throughout most of the Diary but yet died a horrible death in Bergen-Belsen—a harsh dissonance, essential to a sincere understanding of the diary.