Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* For all the books about Anne Frank, many aspects of her life remained unknown in detail until Gerti, the wife of Anne's favorite cousin, Buddy, discovered a forgotten attic archive of heart-seizing photographs and thousands of letters and other plangent documents. Marshaling her skills as a novelist, esteemed German writer Pressler, translator and editor of the definitive edition of Anne's seminal diary, enfolds select images and excerpts into an enveloping, multigenerational narrative history of a loving and cultured family. Pressler portrays with clarifying sensitivity Anne's grandmother, Alice, and her children, especially serious, thoughtful Otto, who dedicated his postwar life to his daughter Anne's diary and legacy, and his resilient sister, Leni, Buddy's mother. Anne's last living relative, Buddy became a world-traveling actor and comedian in Holiday on Ice and forged a close bond with Otto. From passionate and sorrowful letters of love and exile to Otto's wrenching correspondence recounting the cruel fate of his wife and daughters, this many-faceted chronicle provides new perspectives on the personalities and dreams, joys and suffering of one close-knit German Jewish family forced into a universe of horror. Vital and illuminating, Pressler's rendering deepens our appreciation for the artistry and universal significance of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
With her famous diary of life in the "secret annex," Anne Frank provided an achingly personal account of the terrors of the Holocaust and an intimate look at much of her family, particularly her cousin Buddy. Some of these figures have remained shadowy for years, but the 2001 discovery of over 6,000 new documents-letters, family histories, and poems-create a wider narrative history of the Franks, and reveal young Anne-who she was, where she came from, her legacy-with much more scope and clarity than before. Pressler, co-editor (with Otto Frank) of the excellent 1995 edition of Frank's diary, deftly takes readers through the family, from matriarch Alice to aunt Helene to family members living today, like Buddy's wife Gertrude (who discovered the new documents in Helene's attic). Though the narrative can occasionally get lost jumping across time, it's never less than compelling. Readers unfamiliar with the diary may have some initial trouble understanding the significance of particular family members, but Pressler shows excellent editorial sense in organizing a massive array of documents. This is a valuable addition to the Anne Frank story. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Published originally in Germany in 2009 and now available in English, this work weaves together primary documents into a single family chronicle that gives readers a sense of the Frank family members' personalities and humanity. Pressler, the original translator of Anne Frank's diary from Dutch into German, here uses thousands of recently discovered Frank documents to craft a kind of "non-fiction novel" about Anne's family. The story does not focus on Anne (there is little new on her here), but on Anne's father, Otto Frank, and his mother, Alice; his sister Leni, and Leni's son, Buddy Elias. Some of the most interesting passages derive from Otto's letters detailing his search for his family post-Auschwitz, the discovery of Anne's diary, and his subsequent quest to publish his daughter's work. The reader is also shown how Anne's relatives (also prolific writers) were effected by her diary as her story became world famous. Verdict This work stands on its own as a testament to what a particular family went through during both world wars and the postwar period. It is all the more special in that we feel as if we know the Otto Frank family, and now we can get an even closer look into what made them who they were.-Maria Bagshaw, St. Paul (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Heart-rending documents of Anne Frank's family, both before and after the devastating events of the war.As the German translator of the unexpurgated edition of Anne Frank'sDiary of a Young Girl, Pressler brings to this family memoir tremendous care, knowledge and dignity. The task of tracing the life of Anne's father, Otto Frank, and his mother, Alice Frank, shattered by the Nazi war machine and virulent anti-Semitism, was given to Pressler by Gerti Elias, the wife of Otto Frank's nephew; Gerti became the caretaker of her in-laws old home in Basel, Switzerland, where some of the family had moved in 1933 from Frankfurt, when life under the new Nazi regime became too onerous. While Otto moved from Frankfurt with his young family to try to restart his business in Amsterdam, his mother resettled in Basel, and in the attic of her house, a treasure of letters and photographs had been stored for years. Among them, incredibly, are the first missives from Otto to his mother in 1945 on stationery from the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he had miraculously survived after being separated from his wife and two daughters, Margot and Anne, in September 1944, and still knew nothing of their fate. Subsequent letters reveal the crushing news that Edith had died from illness in January, and the girls in March at Bergen-Belsen. Pressler focuses on the pre-war life of Alice Frank, whose family had prospered amid the ghettos of Frankfurt. The author also pursues the career of Alice's grandson, Buddy (once playmate of Anne Frank), who enjoyedin a terrible parallel ironya successful stage and ice-skating career all while the war was destroying the lives of his family.For readers of Anne Frank's diarynamely, nearly everyonethis is a moving amplification on her too-brief life.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
