Summary

Diski begins “The Girl in the Attic” by questioning whether it is possible to be a Jewish person and not be lonely. She recalls that the last time the Jewish God spoke was to Job, and she claims that God is not a good communicator. Diski then goes on to say that Anne Frank is a Jewish saint of sorts. Diski considers that perhaps teenage girls all over the world found, in Frank, someone they could relate to. Frank’s death, Diski says, gave Frank a bit of gravitas, but Frank sounded so much like an ordinary teenage girl in her book. Diski calls the diary, “a masterly description of the sorrows and turmoil of any bright, raging, self-dramatising young girl” (116). Diski believes that when the Diary is read from the point of view of a teenage girl, Frank’s...