Hello Book Lovers,
My name is Nicola and I am the new blogger on the block for Goldsboro Books! Nice to meet you all, unfortunately for you, you now have to put up with my inane wittering until such a time as David comes to his senses and decides to drag me kicking and screaming from the computer, before changing the password and username to get on here, and then seriously considering the future of my employment at Goldsboro...
A few weeks ago we had a signing by Sharon Dogar of her new, rather controversial book, Annexed and I was lucky enough to be at her launch party with Andersen Press. I can safely say, despite the uproar surrounding it, it was a very sensitive, illuminating account of life in the Annexe. Dogar I think has a special talent for dealing with the teenage years of her protagonists with sensitivity and clarity and this is no different, she has picked a difficult subject but has done it justice, exploring a fresh viewpoint of life in the Annexe and considering a question with an otherwise slightly elusive answer – what happened after Anne’s Diary?
It is all too easy to forget that events such as the Holocaust could be repeated – here I will reference a film called The Wave. Based on an actual sociological experiment it features a class of school children that believe the Holocaust could never happen in today’s society. The teacher then creates a group which the class vote to call The Wave, complete with salute and uniform. Over the course of a week the children form a tight-knit group, rejecting those that speak out against The Wave and creating a creepy group mentality that quickly takes over the school, resulting in terrifying consequences when the teacher then tries to make his point and disband The Wave. An extremely scary comment on how easy it actually was and is to fall into the mentality the Nazi’s created.
But I digress, the point is, in my opinion, Annexed serves to keep these issues alive, it is something we should continually be considering, and whilst Anne’s diary should always be a compulsory text in anybody’s reading list, Annexed casts a fresh light on some important issues the youth of today who, languishing in our fairly comfortable society, might otherwise forget. Signed and dated copies are available now.
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