" 'Do you know how it feels [being a character in your stories]? 'it's not deliberate. I don't think about it,' [Anne says.]…'it's on a page where it looks like the truth – even if it isn't!'…It feels like being stolen. [Peter says]'"

I don't feel like the Author's note or epilogue give me enough rationalization as to how Dogar is not stealing Peter, something she caused him to say was so very hurtful.

I do hope people will give this book a chance. I don't think it would work nearly as well had it "disguised" Anne and Peter; Dogar's book is profoundly connected to Anne's and careful not to step on it. There are a few moments when Peter asks Anne "not to mention this in your diary," but it's not a device Dogar uses to allow her characters some sexy time; instead, it shows Peter's desire to have Anne to himself as himself, not simply as another subject she can use for her audience, whether the imagined "Kitty" or the wider public attention Anne desired for her writing.

I share some discomfort with the whole concept of "using" Peter and Anne. No issues with any sexual content; I agree with Roger, the diary IS sexy, and I think what with Anne being conscious of writing parts of her diary for an audience, it's not crazy to wonder if other things happened outside the lines. (That line about "we don't sit miles apart", for instance.)

I was most annoyed by this bit from Jezebel: "Anne Frank's diary is a genuine and beautiful piece of writing purely because of its authenticity." That's pretty dismissive of the actual quality of Anne's writing as writing.

Sorry, just reread all the comments and see you were remarking about the fact/fiction clarification Dogar makes, not the rest of the back matter.

However it did cause me, as a reader, to think about things I hadn't thought much of before, like how might the Franks have appeared to the Van Pels? What might it have been like to view Anne not as she saw herself? What if you were a hormonal teenage boy, with a girlfriend "outside" who you long for,forced to go into hiding with a bunch of mostly adults?

I see your point. But I can't yet see the justification for using Anne and Peter Van Pels to accomplish this. She could have used fictional characters that echoed the Franks and Van Pels without claiming to represent them, but then it would have been just another Holocaust story. Dogar has to have really really hit the ball out of the park for me to think that this is anything but trading on a tragedy.

Anon 12:40

–from the Telegraph

I could easily read that as Dogar saying that the sex she put in her book between Anne and Peter was, of course, pure conjecture.

Now that you say that there's no sex in the book, I read it differently, but I can't fault Jezebel for their take on it.

And I agree with Colleen that the publisher is doing their best to make it all about teh sex, even if there isn't any.

Anon 12:40

Here's the verbatim from the Jezebel article:

If you've read the original diaries, you'll recall that Anne and Peter's relationship consists of a lot of talking, a growing affection, and a chaste kiss. However, Charlie Sheppard, editorial director of Andersen Press, which is publishing Annexed, said that Dogar "feels they had sex, but this was taken out from an earlier version." Based on this gut instinct, Dogar has taken the liberty of reinstating sex between the teens – a logistical as well as a creative challenge, one imagines – even as she concedes that the consummation is "pure conjecture."

Dogar's argument is presumably based on the fact that Otto Frank, Anne's father, edited the diaries for publication. However, even were that by some chance the truth, Frank's surviving cousin, who's seen the novel, claim she gets other things wrong. Says Buddy Elias, "Anne was not the child she is in this book. I also do not think that their terrible destiny should be used to invent some fictitious story. From what Otto told me about Peter, he was very shy but in this book he is given a character he did not possess."

Okay, to my read of this (and the pub's statements that Liz mentions) I get that the author thought Peter & Anne had sex. (The pub says that and unless he's lying it's pretty straightforward.) The only reason she would think this (and knowing Anne's father edited the diaries as this has been common knowledge for decades) is if she thinks it was in the diaries and then removed. (I suppose you could say they did it and Anne never wrote it but she wrote everything else.) That was what I thought. I might not have written it as clearly earlier, but it's what I think. This novel includes the author's supposition of sex between the two main characters. (Even though she might not have written the scene in, she thinks it occurred.)

At the end of the day though the whole Jezebel article is based on what the publisher said and the publisher had no reason to say Dorgan ever thought a single blessed thing about Anne & Peter having sex unless he wanted the world to know that. And again, the cynical side of me says he's delighted by all the furor.

Now, even if the book doesn't have them full on naked going at it (I'm exaggerating here) Jezebel raises the question of is this something anyone should ever think or write about Anne. Meg Rosoff has an interesting take on that, basically saying that as long as you write well, you can certainly write anything about any historical figure you choose to (and she cites Shakespeare among others as examples). But…she also writes that people don't have to like it and that's what you're seeing here.

The whole thing creeped out the Jezebel writer and it creeps me out too. I've read the diary many times and never came to the same conclusion as Dogar – the fact that she made such an intuitive leap at all (whether it was in the final book or not) strikes me as decidedly odd. That's just my opinion but knowing she thought this makes me less inclined to read her book in the first place.

(I think people forget how sexy that book is when you are thirteen years old.)