Review: The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl is a diary written by Anne Frank while she and her family went into hiding during the Second World War for fear of capture by the Nazis as the Frank family were Jews.

The diary provides a fascinating description of Anne’s life from right before the time their family went into hiding to the time they were captured by the Gestapo (not sure if this is a spoiler because this isn’t really mentioned as a part of her diary). I personally think that it is important for the reader to read with the knowledge that Anne was eventually captured and she ended up dying in one of the concentration camps. It doesn’t really take away from the beauty of the book and on the contrary helps the reader appreciate what a promising young girl Anne was and how her life was sadly cut short.

Ok so for my review of the book. The diary was presented to Anne on her 13th birthday and she started writing in it shortly before her family went into hiding. Understandably the entries she makes in the beginning are childish and sometimes even tend to get irritating. She comes across as a big know it all who found it hard to get along with others for the most trivial of matters. In other words, a typical teenager. What is brilliant though is that the reader is subsequently taken on a journey through the next two years of Anne’s life, the majority of which were spent in hiding. I could literally see Anne transforming from a young over-smart teenager to a mature woman. The circumstances that she was placed in slowly transforms her into a far more understanding and insightful person. For obvious reasons a large part of the diary had recounted incidents of fights and arguments that took place between the families in hiding. I used ‘obvious’ because heated tempers is something that was bound to happen regularly for people who were stuck in a small confined space for nearly 2 years. Add to that the overwhelming emotion of fear of being caught which influenced every action that the families took. In between all this there also the beauty of young love which Anne experiences and which wonderfully captures the subtleties of growing up which I’m sure a lot of us can relate is with.

I rated this book 3.5/5 despite its not so interesting beginning simply because of the way it ended. Anne’s growth into a mature woman is phenomenal and towards the end she captures aspects of human behavior and insight that are simply brilliant. The end of the book is full of quotable quotes that simply show how much she has grown. Another thing I really liked about the book was that it was so incredibly honest. Often when I’ve read a book I’ve wondered if the writer was writing something simply to impress the reader or to make the writing sound more fancy (even while writing this review I need to think twice about what I’m writing) but that was certainly not so with this book. It was probably because of the nature of the book i.e. a diary that enables it to come across as so honest.

It is, like the description on Goodreads says “fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short”. This book should be mandatory reading for all teenagers and everyone else should most certainly read this gem as well.

My Rating: 3.5/5