While writing S hirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life , I read the books that were important to Jackson, listened to the music she liked, and purchased a vintage bottle of her favorite perfume. I even tried cooking some of her recipes, although my family was less than enthusiastic about her famous meatballs containing Italian dressing and pickle juice. Anne left almost no documentation other than her famous diary, which readers and scholars have investigated from seemingly every angle.
Could there be anything still left to discover by following the clues she left there? Van Marxveldt was the author of the Joop ter Heul books, an extremely popular series for girls about a spunky Dutch teenager and her friends. Joop is a tomboy who delights in playing pranks, neglects her homework, and sneaks cigarettes behind the bike shed at school.
Like Anne, she is often scolded for talking to her friends in class and even made to write an essay as punishmentβas Anne too describes doing. Before Anne went into hiding, she and her best friend would read aloud their favorite passages from the books and act them out. During her first few months in hiding, Anne was a haphazard diary keeper. But when one of the helpers who supplied her family with food and other necessities brought Anne a book from the series, she suddenly found her voice.
As time passes, the tone of those early entries shifts dramatically into one that is more serious and contemplative. While in hiding, Anne spent many hours a day doing schoolwork. In an entry dated May 11, , Anne mentions reading biographies of Galileo and Emperor Charles V, studying foreign-language vocabulary, and reading stories from the Bible.
I must have read the Diary four or five times without noticing these words. One day, while I was looking over my notes, they jumped out at me.
