My Name is Anne, she said, Anne Frank by Jacqueline van Maarsen

The memoir lay on a display table at Waterstones and I don't know I picked it up merely because it was simple to read. No - although it was a short book that I knew I would champion in the course of a few stolen evening's peaking - it was the fly-leaf synopsis describing Jacqueline van Maarsen's survival because her french mother managed to unlist her from being a jew, that intrigued me.

I have never read Anne Frank's diary, though I have read fragments. Jacqueline's memoirs were fascinating. I liked from the beginning the descriptions of Jacqueline's mother Eline and her triumphs in the fashion industry. I liked the explanations given for everything, like Eline's decision to pursue fashion in defiance of her unfaithful father, or her desire to have children to console her parents for a lost grandchild.

I liked Jacqueline because she was artistic, and often her descriptions diverted to descriptions of art nouveau art and architecture. I liked that they lived on a street of flourishing new young families, involved in art and music.

When Anne entered the scene, her friendship immediately reminded me of my friends CE's. How friendships where the best friends are utter opposites have always bewildered me! Jacqueline writes: " We were complete opposites, but we were kindred souls." Jacqueline admired Anne for being bubbly, spirited, extraverted and full of zest for life. On the contrary, I sympathized and felt for Jacqueline who suffered under Anne's tyrrany. Anne was jealous of Jacque's other friends, writing slanderingly of them in her diary. Anne seemed very possessive and "full of herself" to me. Just the other day, though, my roommate mentioned how she liked a certain bold coworker of hers "because I'm not like that." And Jacque suffered from loneliness at her new school, withdrawn because after her intimacy with Anne other friendships were hard to come by.

I even mourned for her how she would never have suffered if her mother had had her unlisted as a jew from the beginning of the war. I mourned the secret correspondence Anne proposed, that was never realized.

It surprised me how short the period of their friendship was - only a year in their 12th or 13th spring. And yet its poignancy endured for a lifetime, Jacque is an old woman now. I wonder who she finally married. I liked that the theme of the book was really her parents marriage, the mariage of the french lady and her dutch jewish husband, and that the memoir primarily pays tribute to Jacque's family. Her sister, I suppose, is mentioned only in passing for privacy reasons.

The book affected me, and I already like Anne's friend better than Anne herself.