Annelies by David R. Gillham

Annelies by David R. Gillham– 480 pages

Book Blurb:

The year is 1945, and Anne Frank is sixteen years old. Having survived the concentration camps, but lost her mother and sister, she reunites with her father, Pim, in newly liberated Amsterdam. But it’s not as easy to fit the pieces of their life back together. Anne is adrift, haunted by the ghosts of the horrors they experienced, while Pim is fixated on returning to normalcy. Her beloved diary has been lost, and her dreams of becoming a writer seem distant and pointless now. 

As Anne struggles to overcome the brutality of memory and build a new life for herself, she grapples with heartbreak, grief, and ultimately the freedom of forgiveness. A story of trauma and redemption, Annelies honors Anne Frank’s legacy as not only a symbol of hope and perseverance, but also a complex young woman of great ambition and heart.

Anne Frank is a cultural icon whose diary painted a vivid picture of the Holocaust and made her an image of humanity in one of history’s darkest moments.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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Annelies is a book that will either keep you glued to the plot or make you angry it was ever written. Harsh words, I know. Many readers felt like this book was impugning Anne’s history and that the book dishonored her memory. I didn’t feel that way. Not at all.

To me, this book was written as revisionist fiction. It’s the beauty of the “what ifs” that allows our minds and hearts to expand. I’ve read many books in this genre, two of which have to do with the Frank family. Both Margot by Jillian Cantor and The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank by Ellen Feldman turned real people into fictional characters with imagined lives and worlds. I recommend them both.

To take on Anne Frank requires delicacy and mountains of research. This was done with great skill. The reader can sense Anne’s palpable anger, confusion, guilt and hurt. The question of ‘how to move on’ after the Holocaust was ever present throughout the book. Each person dealt with survival differently, even the gentiles that saw them taken by force, had varied reactions. Anne was an inquisitive and obstinate young lady. I love that the author wasn’t shy in allowing Anne to have typical teenage angst; bickering with her mother, flirting with boys and trying cigarettes. Anne’s relationship with Margot was like yin and yang, which set Anne off balance by returning without her. Pim had the most special connection with Anne and the irony of  their relationship being fissured upon living was not lost on me.

There is so much to discuss in this novel and book clubs will devour it, especially if they read The Diary of Anne Frank as a companion read. Gillham is the author of the New York Times best-seller, City of Women, which I enjoyed reading and discussing with my book club.

Quotes I liked:

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” 

-“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” 

-“ What I want to say, her father tells her tremulously, what I think is important to say, is… He damply clears his throat. Grief. The word cracks as he speaks, but he clamped down on it with a frown. Grief he says is natural. But we cannot allow ourselves to be crushed by it. God has given us life Anne. For reasons that only he can understand.”

– “Anne stands motionless, but she feels a rising boil inside. You think, she asks with a biting precision, it was God? Her father blinks. You think, she repeats, it was God who has given us life? Anne, her father tries to interrupt, but she won’t allow it. If it was God who has given us life, Pim, then where was he at Birkenau? She demands. Where was God at Bergen-Belsen?
Her father raises his palm as if to deflect her words. Anneke! Anne continues, The only thing God has given us, PIM, is death. She feels the horror erupt inside her. God has given us the gas chambers. God has given us the crematoria. Those are gods gift to us, PIM. And this, she declares exposing her forearm in the mirror’s reflection. This is his mark. The indelible blue defilement stains her forearm. A -25063. The number that replaced her name. 
Her father’s reply: “ Yes, Annelies he says, it is impossible to believe that God has chosen life for us. Chosen you and me among so many others who died. It is utterly impossible to comprehend, yet that is precisely what we must believe, he tells her, if we are to survive. Silence is all Anne can offer him.”