Sarah's Library

8/8 - It was interesting reading this because I kept forgetting it wasn't real, that Peter hadn't actually survived the Nazis and made it to America. I was very impressed with the amount of research Feldman put into the story and I really liked the quotes, taken from numerous sources, that started each paragraph. Those quotes gave authenticity to what was happening in the story, they seemed to make Peter fit in to the documented events completely believably.

Some of Peter's actions and reactions to life were a bit weird and I found it hard to understand why he did some of the things he did. But then I'm not a survivor of anything (except a few heart operations), so I know that I have no way of knowing how I would behave if I was Holocaust survivor. So while I didn't understand some of his reactions to every day life, I didn't question the legitimacy of any of it, I just found it hard to relate to.

At the start I was surprised to read that they had no records of exactly what happened to Peter after the secret annexe was discovered. I was sure I remembered there being the final information for each of the inhabitants of the Secret Annexe in the epilogue or notes at the end of The Diary of Anne Frank. But it has been over a year since I read it, so I figured maybe I was misremembering. It turns out I was not, that Feldman had used the mistake of a tour guide (got to say that's a pretty stupid mistake for a tour guide of the Secret Annexe to make) to create her alternate history. A stupid mistake that lead to a pretty good book that I would recommend to anyone who enjoyed The Diary of Anne Frank or any other piece of literature on the subject.