An enlightening, harrowing set of first-person narratives by six women who knew Anne Frank before the war and during her final hellish months in German extermination camps.
Lindwer, himself the child of Dutch-Jewish parents who survived the war in hiding, created a documentary film in 1988 featuring abbreviated versions of these interviews with survivors who grew up with—and nearly perished with—the single most compelling metaphor of the Nazi Holocaust. Even from a literary viewpoint, it is intriguing to hear from Hannah Pick-Goslar, who appears several times in The Diary of Anne Frank. She gives us her own perspectives on the precocious Anne and her family, and even recalls Anne receiving the beautiful diary as a 13th-birthday gift and constantly writing in it, "shielding it with her hand'' and never showing anyone what would become the world's most-read diary. This same girlhood friend throws a package of food and clothes over the barbed-wire fence to Anne, from another section of Bergen-Belsen, but another inmate catches and steals it. We also discover that a skeletal Anne succumbs to typhus and despair when she erroneously thinks that her father, too, has perished. Other large ironies and small details fill out a picture of what happened to the diarist after the Nazis discovered the "Annex'' on No. 263 Prinsengracht
Anne Frank would have been 63 this year; Lindwer's invaluable effort picks up where the diary of the century leaves off.Pub Date: May 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-679-40145-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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