Published in 1947 by what can only be assumed was a publishing house full of people who didn't read very much, this 'diary' will - I imagine - be the first and last thing we hear from Ms. Frank.
It was not at all surprising to hear that it is the work of a girl in her early teens, for her solipsism makes Bridget Jones seem like Deanna Troi. The Fielding-esque themes are all there (girlish notions of romance, the spectre of rejection, fear of being discovered and then killed by jackboot-wearing thugs), but Frank's book is for the most part a hollow tome, free of any semblance of narrative thrust. It seemed obvious to this reader that while Frank reserves a certain distrust for Germans, one can assume that at her tender age she most likely never even met a German, let alone visited the country for herself. And for all her talking, she doesn't really offer any solutions to the situation she finds herself in.
In finishing, it is important to point out that Frank's lack of narrative resolution at the book's end feels less like poetic ambiguity and more like she simply ran out of steam. Here's hoping her sophomore effort has a lot more bite.
