SHELF LIFE
Psychological suspense author Charlotte Duckworth outlines the five books that most gripped her imagination
Charlotte Duckworth
The Diary of A Young Girl
by Anne Frank
We had to read this at school, and I remember nobody in my class being particularly enamoured with it. But I took my copy home and it’s safe to say, I became obsessed. I was about the same age as Anne was when she wrote it, and it honestly felt like she was speaking to – or even, for – me. I was too immature to fully appreciate the horror of her situation, yet her teenage thoughts about her relationships with her parents, her sister and her ambitions for life so closely mirrored my own that I fell deeply in love with her. I honestly don’t know how many times I’ve re-read Anne’s diary – at one point, I knew great chunks of it by heart. I also started trying to teach myself Dutch so I could read it in its original language. I will never forget the Epilogue, where in a single, brutal line it explains that Anne’s sister’s death in Bergen-Belsen was the thing that finally broke her spirit. It was the most devastated I had ever been as a child. Anne made me feel like I could be a writer too. This will always be the most important book I ever read.