At The Sign of The Sugared Plum

Just finished this extraordinary book. This habit of reading with my twelve year old daughter has its risks (The Sisterhood of Travelling Pants was a waste of time) but most certainly has its rewarding moments too. This book was one of the more pleasant experiences. Mary Hooper explores the Great Plague of London through the eyes of a young village girl, Hannah. It actually reminded me of the old saying that history is all lies except names and literature is all truth barring names.  But this story is more than a historical fiction, this is a story of  adolescent empathy and courage. This is a story of a heart full of love and life. Of a soul that knows the value of being alive and can risk much to protect another living soul and by the same logic pay reverence to a life extinguished.

"Whatever does not break me, makes me stronger" (Nietzsche)

Living in the shadows of the fast moving death, apprehending that your turn is just round the corner and desperate to avoid the unavoidable is a make or break experience. And if it does not break, it most certainly imparts a strength of character only such grave calamities are capable of bestowing.
Its an experience you would like your twelve year old daughter to have. All twelve year olds to have. 

Anne Frank's Diary

Just finished Anne Frank's 'Diary of a Young Girl'. A really special experience for me as this was the first serious book I read together with my daughter. 

This celebrated book is by a young girl Anne Frank who was a Jew. Her family shifted to Holland from Germany, hoping that Holland would remain a safe place for them. Germany captured Holland and finally she (then 13) went into hiding with her family. They were captured and deported to a concentration camp. That was unfortunate because hers was the last group to be sent from Holland. She died of typhoid only a month before her camp was liberated. She was 15 then.

She kept a diary that was presented to her on her 13th birthday, till her last day in hiding. That diary was her only true friend during those awful months. And she confided everything in that. What makes the reading so agonizingly intolerable is that Anne is hopelessly honest in her writing. The diary somehow survived and so did his father who got it published. 

Its not so much about holocaust and Germany. Its about a very young, sensitive and intelligent girl who was going through what is generally the most intricate phase in a girl's life. A phase when freedom, in its broadest sense, is demanded by, and granted to, young souls. When aspirations and dreams combine to create a world of its own. When friendships and relationships are not sought but bequeathed. And here we have Anne, in hiding, under constant agony and fear.  Nightmares and dreadful solitude! In a world, swinging violently between fear and despair at one time and hope at the other! 

Her world is not natural and her life crawls on so piteously. This life is so unreal as if she is living in my imagination only!

Its this aspect of the book that puts such human tragedies in perspective. A whole generation of Anne missing her childhood, her youth.  Six million killed and another couple of millions subverted. 

My daughter all the time was expressing her disbelief for what was happening to Anne ("only two years, my senior", she says, " how could that happen?").  As for myself, sitting and reading the 'Diary' with my own little Anne,  I could hardly believe my luck.