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• 1. Sandra  |  July 15th, 2006 at 7:48 am

  Hey if you find out what happened will you please please email me back at tell me!? Its killing me, I’m looking at everything i can get my hands on to find out what happened to Anna.
  Thanks Sandra

• 2. Gregg - Sequoya  |  July 18th, 2006 at 8:12 am

  Hey Sandra, I know just how you feel! If I ever do figure it out, I will let you know. The theories that I’m going on right now (and this is just from what I’ve found surfing the net) is that Anna was a ghost of some sort; there are some hints that maybe she died when she was driving the main goth guys car. The other one I keep coming back to is that the narrator’s friend who is into selling drugs is somehow involved. Ultimately I don’t think the author intended this book to have a neat and tidy solution, but if I find anything of substance, I’ll post it here.

• 3. Ashley  |  August 10th, 2006 at 11:17 am

  Sandra i feel the same way. The thing is that i know there must be a good ending to this as the hunt for the answer to where anna is was so elaborate. I really got into finding out where Anna is, since it was almost half the book. i have been searchign online ofr an answer but it has seemed hopeless. i also tried to decode the page of ” quick answer be pray” and all the other words, but it seems the houdini code online is slightly diffferent then the one he uses, making it useless. he also mentions that code in the book, though i dont know why he uses a different one than the one i have found many times online. this book really intrigued me and im really hoping that somewhere online is the answer, as the hint that i was given from the book’s homepage, didnt help whatsoever.

• 4. Anonymous  |  August 19th, 2006 at 5:18 pm

  maybe it has to do with why Anna calls herself ‘Anastasia’

• 5. Ashley  |  August 29th, 2006 at 5:54 pm

  what does anastasia refer to?

• 6. Gregg  |  August 29th, 2006 at 6:50 pm

  Most likely refers to the Daughter of Tsar Nicholas who also disappeared (most likely killed) under a cloud of mystery. A good background page is here
  http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/Russia/Anastasia.html
  This page also talks about Anna Anderson, a person who some thought was the real Anastasia.

• 7. Alexandria  |  September 19th, 2006 at 4:31 pm

  I’ve gotten two clues so far, via email:

  Forever breathes the lonely word

  That came with a picture of the album cover with Martin Duffy on it. (It’s the 6th album released by the british rock band Felt)

  And the most recent:

  nycs

  The picture won’t download for me. : /

  I’m so lost.

• 8. Colleen  |  September 19th, 2006 at 5:29 pm

  Me too. However, I am pretty sure the narrator’s name is Gergory Galloway. That makes sense. As for Anna’s disappearence? No clue.

• 9. Gwen  |  September 25th, 2006 at 9:37 am

  The code (now tell answer answer-be, etc) is different from houdini’s code in a few ways, but using the clue Anna gave in the book (Believe = answer tell pray-answer look tell answer-answer tell), it is possible to break the code yourself. My best friend and I spent about two hours pouring over it, but we solved it.

  However, it doesn’t seem to have much relevance to the mystery of Anna. As the title of the riddle would suggest, it is just the author’s thanks.

• 10. Ashley  |  September 28th, 2006 at 3:02 pm

  yeah i tried to copy it down and only used the letters ‘B’ ‘E’ ‘L’ ‘I’ and ‘V’ but it dosent get you much to any where. you’d think he’d use the same one.

  I have, now, 6 hints. all that make no sense.

  one has the subject name ” gadabout” with the messege:
  Pull the curtains to the sill,
  Darken the rooms, cut all the wires.
  Crush the embers as they fall
  From the dying fires:
  Things are not going well.

  another one shows a page in a diary about her tring to make a coil machine or something. i dont get any of the pictures.

  finding the ending of this book gives me headaches

• 11. Clair  |  October 17th, 2006 at 8:16 pm

  This book was crazy great! I could not put it down. as for solving it I have yet to do so, and the emials aren’t helping, but Gregory Galloway SAID that in order to solve it one must listen to the music from the mix cd’s Anna gave the narrator, and links to the lyrics and pictures of the cd covers can be found on simpleassnow.com along with links to the people she talks about which I found to be somewhat helpful. The ghost thing makes some sence, but I stilll don’t get it. I especially dont get the part about mumler, since Mumler was a famous photographer known for the first “Spirit Photos”. and why was the dad’s phone there? I think that oculd be a connection to Carl, not his father, and it could also be a setup by anna. Also, the condom wrapper vexes me. He was sure he disposed of it, but why would she go through the trouble of planting it if it wernt important? It’s really driving me crazy not knowing the ending tho!!!!!!

• 12. Barb Goosman  |  October 18th, 2006 at 1:55 pm

  I keep reading that there is a book trailer on the website, but where is it? I want to use it in a book talk next week. thanks.

• 13. Jane  |  October 18th, 2006 at 2:00 pm

  When I look at the website I get a Windows Media box over on the lower left hand of the screen. I’m assuming that that is where the trailer would be. My computer can’t download the Media software, but if you do so, you might be able to see the trailer?

• 14. Debra  |  October 20th, 2006 at 7:45 pm

  I think the art teacher is involved. He calls her Anastasia on page 244 (paperback). Only people who cared about her called her Anastasia, and supposedly, he didn’t know her. Also, there is the fact of the Gorky book in his office, the same one Anna told the narrator about (Halloween Chapter).

• 15. Anonymous  |  October 21st, 2006 at 10:40 am

  The author also has a myspace page

• 16. Melissa  |  October 22nd, 2006 at 5:39 pm

  you guys, okay right at the end when he reads his obituary it basically sums it up. he went there in hopes to find her. his obituary was her way of telling her where she was and that someday, maybe in a long time but still someday they would be togethher again. At least thats how i saw it. But i really hope it is, and i want him to make a sequel so badly. but i have a question, does anyone remember when he was listening to that song that he said was like a ‘gothic anthem’? well does anyone know if he mentioned the name of that song? because i’ve been scanning the book and can’t seem to find anything. but i downloaded all of the songs that she burned for him into my itunes and i really want to know the name of that song! if anyone could post a comment about it, it would be greatly appreciated! THANKSS.

• 17. Gregg - Sequoya  |  October 23rd, 2006 at 7:25 am

  Combining a few of these comments, the myspace page for the author http://www.myspace.com/gregorygalloway has the trailer for the book that a previous commenter was looking for.

• 18. Melissa  |  October 23rd, 2006 at 1:24 pm

  okay does anyone get the acknowledegement page? oh yeah and has anyone found the relevance of the songs?

• 19. Anonymous  |  November 10th, 2006 at 10:33 pm

  I think that the town that this was set in was supposed to be like Mumler. The Cayne’s are like the Mumler family because after they moved to town, strange things started happening. Also, it was after the first incident (Anna’s disappearance) that the other events occured. Maybe this was planned by Anna before she moved into their town.

• 20. Ashley  |  November 22nd, 2006 at 8:14 pm

  i think there should be a sequal.

  that would solve my problems.

• 21. Hannah  |  December 31st, 2006 at 12:41 pm

  Did anyone feel like Anna is real after you read the book?It made me want to go outside and search for her.

• 22. Eric  |  March 5th, 2007 at 5:53 pm

  Okay, some things

  1) The art teacher Mr. Devon calls Anna Anastasia once. Anastasia says only people who love her call her Anastasia
  2) Anastasia (real Russian princess) and book Ana have parents with the same names and siblings that have their names starting with the same letters.
  3) The song titles and lyrics (haven’t finished that one)
  4) Mr. Devon and Alaska, didn’t Anna go or want to go to Alaska? I think…

  5) I got an email: subject was 91664. The attatchment was a picture I haven’t figured out and an excerpt from a conclusion about John Speke’s journey to fing the mouth of the Nile.

• 23. Melodi  |  March 16th, 2007 at 7:16 am

  I just finished reading the book last week and am in the process of doing a project on it for English. I have done nothing but search the net for ANYTHING having to do with this book. Also, for the person looking for the trailer, an additional site you can go to is Google Videos or YouTube to find it (just type “As Simple As Snow” and it comes right up). I do have a question, though. Does anyone know what the number 4 had to do with anything? I mean, was it just a random number Anna picked?? I was just wondering.

• 24. Gregg  |  March 16th, 2007 at 8:50 am

  Hey Melodi, Refresh my memory on that part, when did she choose the number 4?

• 25. Molly  |  March 26th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

  Hey guys, to save you all the trouble, the code in the back under acknowledgments, is actually the author’s acknowledgements. It was a code that houdini used to communicate to his wife, bess, during his magic acts.

  His acknowledgements translate to:

  DEBT GRATITUDE AFFECTION

  LOVE TO THE FOLLOWING:

  AIMEE, ANNA, DAVID, AND THE ROBIN’S OFFICE GINA

  THANKS TO BMW AND THE DRIVE BACK AND FORTH TO CORNWALL

• 26. lauren  |  March 31st, 2007 at 9:50 pm

  Alexandria - the clue you had sent to you “nycs” - I think means new your correspondence school, which is in the letter the narrator finds in mr. devon’s office - anna had written “the new your correspondence school is not dead” - whatever that means!

• 27. Matt  |  April 3rd, 2007 at 11:37 pm

  Or it could just be that this book was never meant to be solved completely. Also, Colleen, I never thought that the author was the narrator. That kind of adds a new twist to the book. Plus I am so glad that other people have read this book and found it as intriguing and compelling as I did.

• 28. joe  |  April 7th, 2007 at 3:37 pm

  i loveed that book sooo much!!does anyone else think that she ran away to another town to write more obitchoaries and that the dress was pointed in the direction of where she went so he could find her?

• 29. joie  |  April 15th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

  Melodi
  the number 4 is like a synonym for death in chinese…if that helps.

• 30. Katie  |  April 16th, 2007 at 5:01 am

  i agree with Matt. I think the autor might be playing with our minds, trying to see what we come up with.

  Has anyone been able to get all of the songs?

• 31. Roslind  |  April 30th, 2007 at 7:11 pm

  I read this book sometime last year and I still haven’t been able to find out anything and it is bugging me soo bad. I really just want to know what happened the book was too good to be true and yet I felt like Anna was a real person. If anyone knows anything I hope they would tell me.

• 32. Samantha  |  May 2nd, 2007 at 4:27 pm

  ok….i read some of the comments left before by many others and let me say that i too am still trying to figure out what happened…its mind boggling. I saw some people refer to Anna’s name…The meaning of the name means Grace and Honor….but the name she wants to go by Anastasia means Ressurrection. I think that Ressurrection ties in a lot with the book, some people talk about other people being ressurrected (now i dont think that can actually happen) and i think that Anna may have been ressurrected maybe not in the physical sense as in she died once than came back (although that may be possible) but that she came back through the narrator in the end of the book. (But im not ruling anything out at this point. What i mean by the whole ressurection thing is that at the end the narrator talks about a lot of the things that Anna told him about in the beginning.

• 33. TJ  |  May 2nd, 2007 at 7:33 pm

  I have to say, this mystery thing is becoming really tired. Everything is just going in circles, both with the lyrics and the clues. It’s like “I get it, these are all the things Anna felt during their relationship”, but it’s not telling us anything we already know.

  Plus the fact Anna is an unreliable source, as said by her father. So anything she has said can be deemed unreliable.

  I think Mr. Galloway is just pulling our leg, honestly. Getting a good laugh out of making kids solve some clue that’s not really that important to the world.

• 34. Tristine  |  June 2nd, 2007 at 8:24 pm

  on page 49 the narriatot says that Anna is constantly changing her name on the internet. He gives a list “A.B.C (Anna Belle Cayne), E.A.P (Edgar Allan Poe), J.T.R (Jack the Ripper), E.M.H (Ernest Miller Hemingway), A.A.F (Abigail Anne Folger), G.A.H (Gary Allen Hinman)

  But Then it says

  “E.W.H (?)”

  What does that mean?

• 35. michelle  |  June 28th, 2007 at 6:21 am

  okay, i was just looking threw this web sight [[http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2303&dept_id=478844&newsid=14556922&P]]
  and i found out that there is NOT going to be a sequal to As Simple As Snow… :[ what does this mean about the text and how the code kept comeing back to the main charicter?? well here’s the quote from the websight.
  “As “As Simple As Snow,” sells briskly, Mr. Galloway is in the middle stages of an as-yet-unnamed second novel. It won’t be a sequel to his first, and its main characters won’t be teenagers.”
  ugh…. at first when i finished the book i hated it becuase of the ending left all the questions unanswered, but now i’m just compeled to figure it out.
  but i am still super bummed that he’s not make a sequal….

• 36. JiK  |  September 1st, 2007 at 7:26 pm

  Stated above, there is no solution. The book was concluded, and wonderfully so. The narrator was trying to solve a mystery, find the answers, because he needed to solve the mystery and find answers. Psychological, emotional need for closure or ending. It was driving him nearly crazy, until he decided to ‘get out’. The author did a great job making you sympathetic to his plight. How many of you would, in the real world, take pity on a case like his, and try to urge him to move on, put it behind him, etc. Through the book, the author helped you feel his need. And many of you still feel it. But, like the real world, it’s not a canned mystery, there is no simple solution. There is to be no solution. The author has not planned on providing a big reveal for dedicated readers. He is just providing a mechanism for you to continue with the emotions and needs you developed while reading the story. Well done, Galloway. Well done. I bet he never actually settled on an explanation for what happeend, even in his own mind. It’s like quantum mechanics: all possibilites currently exist, because none has ever been decided on by anyone, even the author.

  Personally, I think Bryce had an ongoing on/off relationship with Anna, came over that night, left the wrapper, and for some reason Anna ran off after that, framing the scene as a suicide. The girl that died in the teacher’s fire was somehow related to anna, and she hated him for it. that’s a stretch, but I’ll fan the flames for entertainment’s sake.

• 37. Laura  |  October 13th, 2007 at 6:15 pm

  also, when the narrator used a map to point the direction of the dress that anastasia left behind, he said it ended up somewhere in alaska, where the art teacher was headed. there must be some connection between them since he did call her anastasia and she had been giving him clues jsut the same as she had been giving clues to the narrator. anna somehow knew about the reason why the art teacher moved there but in his obituary he was the one that died in the fire and not his girlfriend. can anyone make sense of all of this? and what about the bruises all over her? where did she get those?

• 38. Jenna  |  October 28th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

  Does any one else think that the narrator, th main character, is Gregory Galloway? I can give you reasons why if you are interested.

• 39. Rob  |  October 29th, 2007 at 6:53 pm

  There’s no need for a sequel. The story is over. Everything that needed to happen has happened.

  Don’t keep looking at/for Anna. Anna isn’t the main character in the story, and what happens to her isn’t the point of the story. The story is about the narrator and the changes he goes through as a result of his relationship with Anna and what happens afterwards.

  Look at how he is at the beginning: he’s nothing. He gets good grades but isn’t really interested in anything and not particularly good at anything. He has no direction and his only friend is the guy who’s friends with everyone (Carl). His parents are blanks and he’s disconnected from his brother.

  Then look at him at the end. He’s completely different. He’s got a life. He’s gone to places in his mind that he’s never gone to before. He escapes from the town and his parents and gets a new start, and you can be sure his life moving forward won’t be anything like what it had been before.

  One of the big themes is that of the people who come into our lives and change them. Many of them are young women, for some reason (how many dead or missing girls are there in the book? I think there are four total, counting Anna). They all left their marks on the people near them (in one case literally, the burn scar on the art teacher’s leg). Anna arrived, changed everything, and left. It’s what she was there to do. She even sent him a message at one point that he wasn’t trying hard enough. He needed to put more effort in. He hadn’t changed enough.

  Go back and read it again, and this time, stop looking at Anna. It’s a very different story that way.

• 40. rourke  |  November 1st, 2007 at 5:44 pm

  the fact that you guys really don’t get it is overly hysterical. don’t think too hard about it. it’s right there. literally.

• 41. MelCarver  |  February 19th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

  Near the end there’s a scene between the narrator and the teacher where he finds the paper from Anna saying “How to draw a Bunny. The New York Correspondance School did not die.” Then June 5th, 1973 is crossed out, January 13, 1995 is under neath. Then he says the drawing looked nothing like a bunny. This is all about an artist named Ray Johnson. There was an award winning documentary about him called “How to draw a bunny”. This very weird artist was into codes, games and sending unusual art in the mail to friends. His bunny drawing looked nothing like a bunny.

  His death/suicide was thought to be his final work of performance art because he left codes behind. On January 13, 1995, was found floating under the Sag Harbor Bridge on Long Island. On this Friday the 13th the body was found near pier 13, Johnson was 67 at his death- add the digits, his motel room was 247- add again, and so on.

  http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/biography.php

• 42. Claire  |  February 21st, 2008 at 11:58 am

  I read the book a year a go or so got it from the library, and meddled about it the clues and such. I eventually just lost interest but then came back to it. I purchased the book in order to have unlimited access to the information it provided, to lend it to all those I thought should read it, and just because I wanted to own one of my favourite books.

  I’ve decided that I don’t have time to dwell on it, and that I should just enjoy it for what it is. A good fiction. I think perhaps Mr. Devon and Anna were related in some way, maybe. Or somehow she new him from somewhere. Also, I was wondering what the reverence was to the valentines card? It also included “NYCS”. Later Mr. Devon says he put it G. G.’s locker on Valentines day. I think it was actually went for Mr. Devon… That bit confused me.

  Please write some sort of feed back? Would be appreciated. I think this is one of the most responsive, on going conversations about the book on the web. At least, that I could find.

  Cheers

• 43. T.J.  |  April 10th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

  Hey ya’ll, Gregory Galloway came to our school today. We asked a couple questions, and most of the stuff was really cryptic, but I got a few answers. First of all, yes the narrarator’s name really was Gregory Galloway, but the publishers and him had an argument and in the semi-compromise they had, the writer decided just to leave the narrorator’s name out, rather that name him another double-dactyl (one the publishers suggested was Oliver Toliver, which he claimed was the stupidest name ever). Second, the CDs really mean something, and he spent a LONG time deciding, and the lyrics, band, and CD jackets really mean something. He said to remember that the narrarator didn’t know everything, and sometimes his perspective was off, just enough to see things a little skewed. He also said Anna jokes a lot, and some things are not to be taken seriously. Finally, he said there was an actual answer, but the reason it isn’t closed is so that everyone can come to their own opinions if they want to. He was really nice, and seemed really smart. I hope I can meet him again, someday. So, there you go. More answers, and more complications. Still more mysteries. EWH? Also, to Samatha, he said someone e-mailed him about if the meaning of Anna and Anastastia, and if that had anything to do with why the narrorator called her Anna. He said he wished he had thought of that, and it was an absoultely brilliant idea. He said that’s what his answer was now. So, Congrats.

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