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Title: A feeble offering from a fine writer
Review: I feel that Alison Leslie Gold, whose book on Anne Frank I thought very fine, was unwise to choose this topic. In approaching the relationship between Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler, her imagination seems to have recoiled. A kind of paralysis sets in immediately after the brilliantly-written description of the horribly real people who sell the author the "Diary." Alas, these are the last horribly real characters to appear in the novel. The unrelenting banality of the "Diary" entries seems to owe much to a reading of Hannah Arendt, without Arendt's originality. Alas, it not only makes dull prose -- it offers nothing new. This was an opportunity for Gold to say something about a much-neglected topic, offer some insight into a notorious but little-understood relationship, but she has largely passed up the opportunity. Seen beside any real effort, in fiction or non-fiction, to look at the nature of Hitler, I'm afraid that this book pales into insignificance.
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