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Lida posts on 8/9/2007 7:38:50 AM You're probably right, Nigel. It just seemed that there were a lot of similarities. Nonetheless, Anna will forever be my favorite all time book...one that I cherish and don't loan out, for fear of not getting my dog-eared copy back.
Nigel C. Fortune posts on 7/23/2007 10:50:53 PM Hi Sorry but i don't think Frank McCort can be Fynn. Looking at his Wikipedia entry he is born in 1930 which means he's far too young. Mister God This Is Anna took place in the Mile End area of East London around 1935 to 1939. Plus the arguement for Fynn Being Sydney Hopkins is pretty strong if you look at the Finchden Manor web site. Best Wishes, Nigel.
Lida posts on 7/21/2007 5:48:02 PM Has anyone else ever wondered whether Fynn, who wrote "Mister God, This is Anna" could possibly be Frank McCourt, who wrote "Angela's Ashes?" There is such a strong similarity with dialect, circumstances, the same brand of "Woodbine" cigarettes, a level of honest love and wonder and the setting in both is in poverty at the time of the Depression. The writing styles are not identical, but similar enough that I just wonder...


NIgel C. Fortune posts on 4/20/2007 9:36:25 PM There is a Wikipedia entry for "Mister God, This is Anna", and at the bottom it mentions that there is a rumour that Fynn was a man called Sydney "Sid" Hopkins who is buried near Taunton, Somerset, England. But there is no evidende that i can find on the interenet for this. Does anyone know the origin of the rumour that Fynn is/was Sydney "Sid" Hopkins? Thanks in advance.
anonymous posts on 2/12/2007 8:20:57 AM There was never anyone like Anna, and there is no other book like this book. I found it in the library of a family friend, who I don't think had ever read the book and let me take it home with me. I read it in an afternoon, and fell in love with Anna almost at once. Despite the datedness, the occasional obscurities, the sentimentality that crops up sometimes, this is one of the truest books I have ever read. In more ways than one it reminds me of my favourite book, The Little Prince. Fynn and Anna taught me more than I could have imagined about life, and showed me in a subtle way that the real answers don't lie in an expensive education, in A-Level Philosophy and Ethics or a PhD in Western Philosophy, but in seeing to the heart of things. Anna's character is so sweet, so bold, so unafraid to be herself and willing to tackle questions that grown-ups shy away from, that it inspires you to be the same. And Anna's Mister God is such a simple and complicated being that he made me think in greater depth about my own faith. My favourite part in the book is the very end - the last page. It was one of the most beautiful moments in any book I've read, and shows that despite the suffering that fills this world God is always there, and has a purpose for all our lives. Anna's life was truly fulfilled... And the answer is "In my middle".
Lea posts on 12/21/2006 2:37:51 AM Shalom from Israel. Who was the author? I know and feel between the lines that he had had a big soul - but who was he? did he have a family of his own? a child? I wish I could know people with such big soul. I feel I want to be a better person for them.
Nicky Wertheim posts on 11/5/2006 2:56:17 PM My mum and I read this book together when I was a young child. It hit a cord in me that so longed to have a close relationship with God like that too: Time with God. Time for God. Hunger to know Him more and more and more. Yes God is my obssession too and I am His. I thank Him for this book for it played a part in opening for me a door to Him which I believe is for everyone else too. Yeshua is His name:(Jesus in Hebrew). Jether was the son of Gideon who did not take revenge; like Jesus.
Sandra posts on 10/21/2006 5:06:14 PM Why is everybody so interested in Fynn? There has someone told us that Fynn's real name was Sidney Hopkins or actually Sydney Hopkins. Sid was a rock although much of his adult life he was semi-crippled following a serious accident involving a train, and spent quite some years literally shuffling around on his knees due to spinal problems. Thankfully, as orthopedic surgery techniques improved, he was able to walk eventually (with sticks) and ended up marrying his physiotherapist. He is not alive any more. But the far more important person is Anna. She was INSIDE of God and that means she was LIKE God, because God made her like him. There has only been ONE on this earth who had also been INSIDE of God, the TREE IN ONE, father, son and holy ghost. So Anna was LIKE Jesus or better Jether.
posts on 9/27/2006 2:28:57 PM I came across this book on a bookshelf at home, and I am so glad I did. A rare and special find, I think. I was intrigued I suppose, and began to read it. It was a page-turned, and yet I reached a point where I had to put it down because it was an overwhelming amount of thought to absorb all at once. I would set it aside, and then somehow lose it, find it, and then start over again, and this happened several times until I finally finished the book. I think by that time I was a little bit older and better able to understand as well. It was and still is a favorite. So many interesting 'points of view' and wonderful discoveries. Would anyone know where it might be possible to find more information about Fynn? I have researched but have not had much luck so far.
posts on 9/17/2006 2:46:20 PM This book has sat on a bookshelf near me for as long as I can remember. When I was a very little girl, I would pick it up and look at the pictures and read "When I Shall Die" by Anna (over and over again—that little poem almost seemingly forgotten tucked at the back of the book as it is offered more truth to me than anything I had discovered in my young life, and I would read it and mull over it for hours). I never read the book, however; as the years rolled by and I eventually got to an age where I could read and appreciate it, it was forgotten, tucked in among other books as a permanent entity in our small literary collection. When I moved on from home, I took the book with me. Many books from my childhood were given away, many forgotten, but this one has followed me around for thirty years. To each new place, it finds its home on a shelf. The bright yellow cover with its peeling paper and creases made it appear a book well-loved and read; but while it certainly has been well-loved, and poured over and held, it had never been read by its owner until this past week. Ah! as Mr. Sproxton terms it in his introduction. I understand why I did not read this book until now—I was not meant to. I would not have been able to grasp what I have grasped now. I am glad I waited, for as this book remains a mysterious star from the past, it now is a star of an entirely different sort (mysterious all the same!) of the present. It reminds me, too, of how fragile our constructions of time are, and how the past links to the present (to the future) in one moment, in one seemingly insignificant little bundle of paper in a brazen yellow cover. I never thought as a child that this was the story of a real girl. I did not pick the book up and read it this last week thinking it was the story of a real girl. And I did not finish it last night thinking Anna was once real breathing flesh and bone. It is a work of fiction in the literal sense, as far as I can understand. But this does not make Anna any less real for me. Where do I find Anna? Inside. Anna is as much a part of me as Fynn is: together they represent a personal journey of enlightenment that each individual soul enters and partakes in. How far one goes is relative, and the paths we take are "squillions" in number, but that we each are journeying a path is undeniable. Fynn is the part of us that has been moulded in large part by society and its structures we are placed in: school and church, for example. But he is smart enough to know that these teachings, these concepts and ideas and "facts" thrust upon him don't exactly fit. Sometimes they don't offer a sufficient explanation. Sometimes the light they cast is the wrong colour. And sometimes they are like trying to force a cat to bark: it just doesn't work! Anna is that nascent, innocent part of us that is completely and entirely herself, unhindered by society's constructs and ideas of whom she should be as a young girl. She is on a quest to discover the world as a means to being like Mister God, and as she discovers that world, she learns more and more that Mister God, while certainly present in all the world around us, is first and foremost found on the inside. It is her ability to shed the fabrications and “facts” of the world outside and find Mister God inside that makes her most like Mister God. The relationship between Fynn and Anna represents our own interior dialogue. Were we once like Anna? Before family and school and church stuffed us into moulds of their own making, too small and the wrong shape for our own unique souls? Is Anna still within us? Is there innocence inside, is there a curiosity about the world, is there a personal quest to find Mister God? Are we like Fynn now? Are we finding that the suit of society wears a tad too constraining? That we cannot fling our arms in dance or get the suit wet in the path of a street cleaner? Are we fascinated and drawn to the sparks of Anna we feel inside? I would venture to say that those of us in this forum are: otherwise we would not have read this book or, having read it, would have tossed it aside and never searched out this forum at all. The main thing I have been reminded of while reading this book is to always try to look upon the world afresh, through a child's eyes if you will—through Anna's. It is like looking at your bedroom with its same bed and curtains, the same stack of books beside the bed (even if the titles change), the same artwork hung on the wall, looking at this bedroom reflected to you in a mirror. Suddenly you are not seeing just the same room in reverse. No! You are seeing an entirely new place, with new dimensions, new objects, new colours. And looking at it, there is a part of you that longs to go there, even as a part of you enjoys the comfort and safety of the sameness of your own room. Where will you venture? What will you risk? The true joy of it all is that the ability to journey into the unknown does not require diving
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