A poignant historiography of Anne Frank’s writing and the author’s response to it.
A writer reflects on Anne Frank’s diary, attentive to its ongoing significance for the world.
In her 2022 novel Reeling, French author Lafon explored the lives of young female dancers in the 1980s, exploited by middle-aged men purporting to help them, and the aftermath of their abuse. In her 2016 novel The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, she wrote a fictional account of gymnast Nadia Comaneci’s childhood in Romania, which ends with the gold medalist’s daring defection to the U.S. Here, Lafon explores the circumstances surrounding another young woman in peril: the writer Anne Frank. Blending historical fact, interviews, Frank’s writing, and personal rumination, the book chronicles a night that Lafon spends at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, with full access to its exhibits and the annex where the Franks lived in secret for two years evading the Nazis. Lafon is unflinching in her observations of the museum—“Everything here wants to be as authentic as possible, and yet none of it is, except for this oppressive feeling of absence”—and in her questions: “When did Otto Frank finally realize that the faith he had placed in their adoptive country was a tragic mistake?” One of the most striking revelations is how normal the Franks’ lives seemed shortly before they went into hiding—Anne posed with her sister at the beach for a photo—and how that sense of normalcy was something they strived to maintain—Anne pinned her favorite film stars to the walls in the annex—as their world unraveled. We learn that after the Nazis captured the Franks, it was Miep Gies, one of Otto’s employees, who not only cared for them while they hid, but who, at great personal risk, saved Anne Frank’s diary from being destroyed. The Franks’ story and the author’s quest to investigate her own experience intertwine to create a testament to the power of words.
A poignant historiography of Anne Frank’s writing and the author’s response to it.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780300275889
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
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