All About Anne

After finishing The Diary of a Young Girl, I was chatting with a friend and they mentioned flipping through a children's book on Anne Frank that had pictures and more information on the people in her life.  So I went looking at the library and found All About Anne by the Anne Frank House.  It gives a great historical overview of all the events surrounding Anne Frank's life.  I really liked how it even goes into detail on what happened after the diary ends, and how her father dedicated his life to getting her story out there.  I also really liked seeing all the pictures (although I was disappointed that there weren't photos of the other inhabitants of the Secret Annex, just Anne's family). It was a little weird though that this book had different names for everyone from what Anne called them in her diary (for example, the family who lived in the Secret Annex with the Franks were the van Pels according to All About Anne, but Anne named them the Van Daans in The Diary of a Young Girl, though Peter was still Peter in both books).  This mostly wasn't a problem, but I'm now not 100% sure which girl was Lies in The Diary of a Young Girl. 

But all in all, I found this a fantastic supplement to The Diary of a Young Girl, and am very glad to have read it! 

The Diary of a Young Girl

For Remembrance Day this year, I decided to read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. My brother and parents read it years ago, bur I was resistant because I thought it would be super depressing. So I wasn't at all prepared for what I found when I started reading: Anne was a superb writer! She was quite funny, and had a real talent for describing what went on around her in the "Secret Annex" where her family and four other people (another family and an elderly doctor) hid for two years before they were discovered by the Gestapo right at the end of the war (the afterword says the Franks were on the very last train in Holland to Auschwitz). 

Anne doesn't just describe the people and life in the Secret Annex; she also spends a lot of time examining her own character, and striving to become a better person. For a young girl (she was 13 when her family went into hiding), she has a remarkably deep understanding of herself and her faults. She admits her failings to Kitty (that's the name she gave her diary), and works hard to right the wrongs she causes. Over the course of the two years, she grows into an independent woman who knows what she wants in life.

As I was reading The Diary of a Young Girl, I was repeatedly struck by the sadness of knowing that the Nazis robbed us of a remarkable writer. Who knows what else she would have written had she lived?

All in all, I really enjoyed The Diary of a Young Girl, and am very glad I chose to read it this Remembrance Day.

The Rose Code

  The Rose Code is Kate Quinn's latest book.  This time she tackles Bletchley Park and the Enigma Machine.  When I heard that's the setting for this newest book, I knew it was perfect for my dad.  Once he was finished reading it (he loved it!) he passed it on to me. I wasn't familiar with much about the Enigma Machine and Bletchley Park, so I wasn't sure what I would think of it, but I trust Quinn's writing and was very happy to give this one a read!

The Rose Code is the story of three girls who end up working at Bletchley in various capacities: Osla, a socialite who wants to make a difference and prove to the world that she isn't just a silly deb, Mab, a girl who has been trying to better herself to snag a better life, and Beth, a timid girl who has been terrorized by her mother all her life.  It follows the three through the ebbs and flows of their friendship during the war years and beyond, through heartbreak, betrayal, and redemption.

I really enjoyed the mix of personalities here (Quinn's books have all had fantastic characters!) Osla was a super bubbly person whom everyone underestimated because all the men just thought she was air headed and silly.  She's based off a real person, whom a good many things that happen in the book happened to (just not the bombing she survived in a London night club).  I loved her relationship with Prince Philip and was super sad when it ended (even though I knew the outcome, both from real life, and from the very beginning of the book).

Beth was also based off of real people (two ladies, rather than just one).  She's quite the interesting character - she's shy and naive, while also extremely cold at times (while it's never said, I believe she is on the autistic spectrum).  She was always mentally beaten down by her mom, so it was great to see her grow into her own (and realize that she is, in fact, brilliant at code breaking).  The book goes back and forth between Bletchley and about two years later, when she's in a mental asylum trying to escape, so a good chunk of the book had me wondering what had happened to her for her to end up here when she was very much sane?

Many of the other characters in the book are either real people (like Alan Turing), or based off of real people (like Giles and Harry).  But Mab is fictional, created in honour of the many women who helped keep Bletchley running.  I loved Mab: she knew what she wanted and wasn't afraid to work to get it. 

Oh, there was also a cameo by Ian Graham from The Huntress.  I was surprised I recognized him in it (I vaguely remembered him being a war correspondent, then confirmed it was him when I read a synopsis of The Huntress).  Very fun nod for people who have read her other books! ;)

While reading The Rose Code, I will admit that I saw some stuff coming before it was revealed, like the truth about Mab's relationship with Lucy, and what was going to happen to Francis. But it was okay - even knowing things were coming, they were still massively impactful as they unfolded.  Also (and importantly), the book kept me guessing about who the traitor might be right to the end, so that was great, being blindsided by it.  Quinn masterfully fed in how the traitor got information as well - when it was revealed, I realized I as the reader had fallen for their tricks as well!

The Rose Code was another fantastic WWII era by Quinn.  I look forward to her next book, whatever it might be!

The Alice Network

After reading both The Huntress by Kate Quinn and D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose, I decided I wanted to read The Alice Network (also by Quinn).  I didn't know much about it except that it involved female spies in the World Wars, so I figured it would be an interesting read after the non-fiction D-Day Girls (plus my dad, who has read both books, kept comparing D-Day Girls to this book).  And I really enjoyed The Huntress, and was just looking forward to an all-around good read.

The Alice Network is the story of two women: Eve Gardiner, who, as a young woman, was recruited to spy on the Germans in France during WWI, and Charlotte "Charlie" St. Clare, a young pregnant American who wants to find her French cousin after WWII.  The only clue Charlie has is the name Evelyn Gardiner.  Hence the two women's worlds collide as they come to realize they may be searching for the same thing.

The Alice Network was an interesting read.  I loved the story that took place in post-WWII Europe (mostly France).  Eve and Charlie were great foils for each other (and I loved the addition of Eve's Scottish driver Finn Kilgore).  The trio are unlikely allies who slowly discover they are more alike than they thought.  I also really enjoyed Charlie coming into her own and figuring out both what she wants and how to work the system as an unmarried pregnant woman during that time (and the difficulties she encountered were eye-opening: she wasn't able to access her OWN savings without the say-so of her father, even though the money was her's).

But I had a much harder time reading Eve Gardiner's spy adventures during WWI.  The slow back and forth between her and Rene Bordelon as she attempted to keep her cover while Bordelon kept drawing her in closer never really held my interest.  And then the scene where Gardiner's hands were destroyed, while I knew that would be coming at some point, was super graphic; I had a really hard time with that.  I was much happier when Eve's story kind of caught up with Charlie's narrative in 1947.

Like in The Huntress, Quinn's characters were interesting.  I also liked how she blended fact with fiction (and I appreciated the extras included at the end of the book, like the letter from Louise de Bettignies).

Overall, I enjoyed this book, but I thought The Huntress was better.

D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II

I remember my brother mentioning to me a year or two ago that he tries to make a point of reading historical nonfiction about the World Wars for Remembrance Day.  I thought that was a great idea, and so made a point of doing the same this year.  I picked out D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II by Sarah Rose, which tells the story of some of the female spies recruited by Britain to help prepare France for the coming Allied Invasion (D-Day).

D-Day Girls mainly follows three women (as well as a few others), detailing what their lives were like, first in training, and then behind enemy lines.  The book also details the larger historical context, mainly showing the games the British agency (back in London) and the German anti-spy and terrorism agency were engaged in over the years.  I found this quite interesting, as I had no idea women were sent as saboteurs to France while the country was under Nazi control.  The book is also an interesting look at how women were treated at that time: first there was a debate about whether to send them at all (which was hindered by the fact that the women didn't do well in training, which also wasn't surprising as they received less training than their male counterparts), then there were points when men in the field refused to acknowledge their leadership (the particular instance I'm thinking of had the men, who refused to take orders from a woman, leaking information directly to the Nazis, putting everyone in danger), and finally, there was the aftermath where the women's contributions were deemed lesser than the men's even though they all did the same work (because the women weren't deemed military, and so were ineligible for military honours or full military pensions).  But it also celebrates some important firsts, such as the fact that some of these women were the first women paratroopers who dropped into enemy lines.

While interesting, D-Day Girls is unfortunately also a bit of a tough read.  For one thing, the book is largely told, with very little shown; that makes for some very tedious reading (and also made it very hard to connect with any of the people within the book).  It also goes into some detail on torture and the like; I had to stop reading after one torture description (and the ending of one of the ladies, while sparse in detail, was sufficiently disturbing that I actually considered not writing about the book because I didn't want to think about that anymore).

All in all, I am very glad to have read D-Day Girls, especially for Remembrance Day.