An important contribution to the literature on Anne Frank.
Another fresh story about one of the 20th century’s most recognizable historical figures.
Anne Frank (1929-1945) remains perhaps the most moving figure to come out of the Holocaust, and publishers continue to turn out her famous diary and books describing her tragic life. In 1933, her German family fled to Holland after Hitler came to power. Her father, Otto Frank, ran a food product business that prospered even after the Nazi invasion in May 1940. When Jews were forbidden to own businesses, he transferred ownership to a non-Jewish executive. After the Nazis began deporting Jews, he converted part of his warehouse into a disguised annex and went into hiding in July 1942 with his family and another one. There they remained for more than two years while the business continued, fed and supported by loyal non-Jewish employees. In August 1944, not long before the liberation, they were betrayed, arrested, and sent to extermination camps. Only Otto survived. In this revealing addition to the history, Dutch writers van Wijk-Voskuijl and De Bruyn focus on the employees who knew of the secret annex. Once Anne’s diary became widely known, journalists, scholars, and tourists called regularly. Three enjoyed the attention, but one—van Wijk-Voskuijl’s mother, Bep Voskuijl—rarely gave interviews or discussed the war years at home. She died in 1983, long before her son began researching this book. Nonetheless, the authors use surviving sources to deliver a moving account of a well-known story and make a convincing case that Bep was Anne’s closest friend and never recovered from the trauma of her arrest and death. The authors devote over half the book to events following the arrest to the present day, and some readers may consider details of van Wijk-Voskuijl’s unhappy marriage an unnecessary detour. Regardless, they will welcome new evidence—if not proof—that it was a close member of Bep’s family who betrayed the Franks.
An important contribution to the literature on Anne Frank.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781982198213
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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