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| Author: 'A Hatred for Tulips' is Richard Lourie's fifth novel. Courtesy of St. Martin's Press |
Who betrayed Anne Frank?
A novel imagines the desperation and regret of a boy trying to do right.
from the August 14, 2007 edition
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In this cold, new Amsterdam, Joop looks for work wherever he can find it. He gives the money he earns to his father, hoping the money will bring him respect. Eventually he lands regular work in a warehouse and earns extra cash on the side by making "private deliveries" for the owner: Joop crosses town with vegetables hidden in his backpack, dropping them off at the homes of people hiding Jews.
When summer comes, and his backpack looks conspicuous, Joop hatches a new plan: His uncle – who lost his legs in an accident at the Russian front – now rides in a wheelchair where the vegetables can be concealed. But when the warehouse owner learns that the uncle fought with the Germans, he fires Joop. Meanwhile, his father falls ill. A good diet is his only chance including, the doctor says, eggs every day – while the family eats tulip bulbs to survive. "He could have just as well said, Eat diamonds."
With no work, the only way to afford eggs, Joop's uncle suggests, is to turn in hiding Jews, for whom the Nazis will pay. The first and only group they betray is the Frank family.
The present-day narration, and the post-war musings on Anne Frank, reach too far, philosophically and narratively, to match the rest of the book. It is where Lourie borrows the conceit of memoir and mingles an adult and child's voice that the story is most intimate: "It was great knocking about Amsterdam those couple of days" after the Dutch went on strike to protest a roundup of Jews. "Everyone was out and excited, but then the Germans started executing people and everyone went back to work."
Lourie's novel is more than a mystery: at its heart is not only Anne Frank's history, but all of Holland's. Joop derides the Dutch for indulging what, until recently, was a very real Anne Frank amnesia. "Three quarters of Holland's Jews go to their deaths," he says, "but thanks to Anne Frank, the country has a reputation for resistance, humanitarianism."
Joop is comforted, after reading Anne's published diary, to learn that his deliveries helped feed the Franks. "I helped her live, not only die," he says. Like his countrymen, he, too, needed to see another side of the story.
Ironically, the book is best where it has little to say about Anne Frank. The connection allows Lourie to pose interesting questions about collaboration and guilt during the war, but it rings truest as a story about a boy, in a difficult family, in a difficult time, and the unintended consequences of trying to do what looks like the right thing.
• Jina Moore is a Monitor intern.
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