The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank

This is not a book about Anne Frank. This is a speculative novel that asks the question, what if Peter van Pels, the boy who shared Anne's Secret Annex hiding place, had survived the war? What would he have done with his life, and how would he have felt about the worldwide phenomenon that the diary became?

Author Ellen Feldman writes from Peter's first-person point of view, so we see the reasons for the decisions he has made -- moving to the United States, denying his Jewishness, devoting himself to building comfortable suburban family homes. Or do we? Feldman's true excellence in this book is revealing the many things that Peter does not admit, even to himself, and how they affect him over the years. Feldman has researched the show more publication of Anne's diary and the controversies that arose as it became one of the defining narratives of the Holocaust. At the same time, so many Holocaust survivors found themselves unable to find a way to share their own stories and suffered tremendous damage from PTSD and survivor's guilt, much like Peter van Pels in this novel. This book was a compassionate and realistic portrait of a boy who survived the horror of the Holocaust, became a man who achieved everything he wanted, but in many ways was unable to stop hiding. show less

The taste of rotten potatoes and moldy beans, and the cold that turned by mother's hands white as frost under the moth-eaten gloves, and the heat that beat down from the sky and steamed up from the streets where we were forbidden to walk, and the terror, and the degradation of the terror. I was trapped in that book as I had been trapped in that house. But - and this was what I could not understand - I was homesick for it too. I longed for those rank-smelling rooms where the walls steamed in summer and dripped as if in a cold sweat in winter. I yearned for those parents. I missed Anne. I ached for myself.

The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank is a what-if. What if Peter van Pels did not die in the Mauthausen concentration camp in May of 1945? What show more if he immigrated to America, denied his Jewish heritage and reinvented himself? What would that fresh start be like? What if the boy from the Annex grew up and had his own family? What if he stumbled across The Diary of Anne Frank? What if his wife became obsessed with the play of the book and the movie made from the play?

This is a book that drips with emotion and feeling. Peter is a man dealing with PTSD and he can't get away from the Annex because Anne Frank is a phenomenon. She is everywhere. If he is forced to go through those events over and over again, at least they could get the facts straight. He sees the way his trauma is affecting his wife and children and he tries to reign it all in. Feldman does such an excellent job at the psychological tension.

Highly recommended. show less

The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank: A Novel by Ellen Feldman is an interesting novel of the Holocaust written from a unique perspective. It is a poignant and compelling story line, which includes haunting remnants of the first love between Anne Frank and Peter van Pels. The historical novel kept me captured through the last page.

Feldman details the historical, and little known facts regarding the diary of Anne Frank. She gives the audience a perspective of, “what if”. What if Peter had survived? What would his life have been like if he had survived? The flow of the story shows how the boy, Peter, grew into an adult. Feldman is extremely brilliant and descriptive in detailing his journey from child to man. There are emotional show more illuminations, expanding on how he developed into a man who came to hate himself, through his own guilt, denial, assimilation, new identity, and fear.
The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank leaves one to wonder whether promises made as a teenager should be kept as we grow and mature. The author analyzes that factor and how it plays into Peter’s life. The analogies in the novel are extremely compelling, the fear often causing a Holocaust of Self, so to speak. show less

The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank tells the story of Peter Van Pels, who was holed up in the annex in Amsterdam with his family and the Frank family. Instead of him dying during a death march in a concentration camp, this book has him escaping with his life, moving to America and beginning a new life. He marries and starts a family but keeps to himself the true story of his past, which continues to haunt him throughout his life.

This is a very well-written book and one which I enjoyed reading. The first third or so built up the story and then suddenly it took off and I could hardly put it down. It's a fascinating story of what ifs and an enjoyable mix of fact and fiction. It also made me think about what it would be like to have lived like show more that and escaped, and how you might feel about your lost family, feeling almost a sense of guilt for having survived. A thought-provoking and interesting novel that has been unread on my bookshelf for too long. show less

I READ this book about a man trying to hide not only who but what he was in one sitting, entranced by the premise of what if Peter van Pels, Anne Frank’s companion-in-hiding, survived the war? What if, traumatised by his experiences and guilty at having survived, he fled to America, denied his Jewishness, his very identity, and almost succeeded in remaking himself — until the sight of his wife reading the newly published Diary of Anne Frank reawoke his past? Ellen Feldman delicately leads the reader through Peter’s stages of anger, denial, guilt and grief until, after five decades, he comes to terms with himself and his place in the world.

A very human glimpse into the aftermath of the horrors of the Holocaust...and what it might be like to survive something one would rather forget. It raises great questions about faith, fear, denial, the fragile nature of memory, and how far a person might go to keep a secret about their past. Feldman got her idea for this book after visiting the Secret Annex and hearing a guide remark that the fate of all its inhabitants was documented except for Peter's (this was later discovered to be untrue...but not until Feldman was far along in her research and writing of the novel). Feldman weaves a tale of who Peter might have been had he survived. She creates an unforgettable character in Peter; one who haunted my dreams after finishing this show more book. Highly recommended! show less

Not what I expected! This story surprised me and took me away from the cliche I thought it would be. There is much depth to the main character and when he cannot let go of his past and chooses to accept, discover and divulge it becomes raw and real.