I’ll have to double-check what version I have. Sexual parts, really? It is weird reading it knowing it’s all for naught in some sense, but again I feel compelled.
I once had a library patron ask me where our fiction section was. Since it’s an academic library and fiction is not alphabetized I asked her what specifically she was looking for and she said (of course) The Diary of Anne Frank.
I wondered very briefly if she was a Holocaust denier but then decided she was just an idiot (and of course I smiled professionally and told her where to find DoAF).
I was familiar with it in high school but we never read it.
You watched Night and Fog, too, eh? I have never encountered anyone outside of my high school that had watched that movie. Lampshades made of skin. :eek: Still causes shivers…
Well, it’s not pages and pages of goat sex, as the kids are calling it these days. Her father had held back some content about Anne’s developing sexuality (as well as some of her more mean-spirited comments about other family members) from the original publication. There are versions that came out after the late 80s that include this material as well as some of Anne’s own rewrites. I think it would be interesting if you were very, very interested in the diary and want to learn even more details, but you wouldn’t be missing anything major if you didn’t.
I read it in either sixth or seventh grade when my family was stationed at a US Army base in Germany, I think on assignment from school. I don’t remember being particularly thrilled with the writing (“Dear Kitty…”), but was fascinated by the history of it. It led me to a lot of other Holocaust books, some of which, in retrospect, were probably too gruesome and ghoulish for a kid my age. It was weird, living in the wonderful, beautiful, friendly country that was Germany in the early '90s, and learning about the horrors it had commited just a few short decades before. I couldn’t make sense of it.
We went on a trip to Amsterdam that summer and did a tour of the Anne Frank House. Chief impressions: the very steep, narrow steps leading up to the secret annex, the movie star pictures on the wall, and the oddly fancy toilet bowl they used. (IIRC, it was like a piece of Delft porcelain – scenes of rustic Dutch life printed in blue all over it.)
Oh, OK. I was wondering who she slept with; Peter, or the dentist in the next bed. :eek:
I believe this one is the version I have.
The main differences, as I recall:
– More text about her school days. Anne started the diary quite a while before Margot’s call-up notice. In the most familiar version of the diary, Anne does a quic “recap” of her life and then plunges into the narrative of the attic. In the expanded version, Anne gossips about the children in her class, (there’s one page which is a list of each student and a brief summary of their appearance and character-- sometimes not so flattering) and what she did at school.
– Lengthy entries on the problems she had with her mother. Anne grew very resentful and spiteful toward her mother the longer they were trapped in their hiding place. The narrative ends without there having been a meaningful reconcilliation between them. Some of the things she says are outright vicious.
– Frank discussions of anatomy and sex. Anne describes in great detail the female genital organs (as she understod them) and talks about periods. As delphica says, it ain’t goat sex, but it was pretty explicit for the time.
– Somewhat embarassing revelations and speculations on the nature of her parents’ marriage.
– Anne’s doodling and clumsy attempts at writing in English. (The version with which people are most often familiar don’t accurately transcribe the sentences she wrote in English.) There are also some story fragments.
– More detail about her extended family.
Question for the OP: Any background info on your acquaintance?
[HIJACK]It’s been many years since I read Wiesel’s Night and I don’t think I’ve ever read his other books. Does anybody have suggestions for what order I should read them in?[/HIJACK]
I am 46, and read it in the 7th or 8th grade – on my own, not as required reading. I had certainly heard about it before I read it, BTW.
My daughter also read it in junior high. During a Holocaust unit at her school she was to choose a book off a short list, all relating to the subject. I think she chose Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmatic. Anyway, she loved the required book, whatever it was, and went on to read a bunch of other books, on her own, including the unedited version of Anne Frank’s Diary. I reread the unedited version at that time.
I must say that, in the unedited version, I found myself sympathizing with Anne’s mother – my daughter, being the same age as Anne, felt very differently. That’s the strength of the story, of course, and why it resonates so. Anne was just such a 13 year old girl…
Hmm. She’s about my age (mid to late 30s), and I would assume native New England, probably New Hampshire. She and her family live in various houses on the same hill, pretty typical of natives here. Working class.
As I mentioned, it wasn’t taught in my schools either (Catholic elementary school and high school in New York State). But I definitely heard of it and was surprised we didn’t have to read it.
Never read it. Saw the movie, visited the house in A’dam etc. but was familiar with the whole Anne Frank thing from a early age.
It surprises me that someone hadn’t even heard of Anne Frank. It’s one of those things that I would have had of assumed everyone in the west would at least have heard of.
If you get a change I’d highly recommend the House in A’dam BTW. You usually have to queue but it’s a very well done tour and absolutely heart breaking 