Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
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Book Reviews of Sarah's Key
Book Review: A Novel Menagerie's Perspective on Sarah's Key
Summary: 5 Stars
The March selection for my new book club is Sarah's Key. I have been seeing that there is noon-time discussion amidst our blogging community regarding this book. So, I picked it up early and started my fascinating read.
The summarization of the book's storyline, above, is the best condensed version about this very intricate and complex read. I was completely spellbound by this book and had difficulty putting it down. As a matter of fact, having insomnia doesn't seem to be bothersome when you have this book to read. It's engaging, horrifying, scary, wonderful, and redeeming simultaneously. I found myself holding my breath as I read the chapters as told by Sarah, Hel' d'Hiv's innocent little victim. I prayed, despite the realistic odds, for her brother Michael. I loathed Julia's husband, Bertrand, for being the horrifically pompous, cheating, and egotistical misogynist that he was. I fell in love with Mame and Eduardo. I prayed for William and praised Zoe. I fell inside of Julia's mind and heart. All of these feelings wrapped up into one little book. The book was, to me, completely unforgettable.
What I discovered on Tatiana's website:
"Sarah's Key is her first novel written in her mother tongue, English. Sarah's Key is to be published in 28 countries and has sold over 700 000 copies worldwide. Film rights have also been sold."
Yes, the book is that great!
Albeit this book is sad, however discovering the emotional side of human atrocities most always is. I won't walk you through this intricately impeccable read because this is one that you should discover on your own. It's a personal road to travel, one which I am glad that I did. I read this book with little forehand knowledge of it and that made this book such a rich read for me. I wish the same for you.
On Sher's "Out of Ten Scale:"
This book tugged at my heart like very few do. I was completely committed to Julia and Sarah and grew to love them both, for many reasons. As such, all I can say is that this superb read gains from me, under the genre Fiction:Historical, a 10 out of 10! I absolutely cannot wait for our book club discussion on it.
Book Review: Well crafted, harrowing, readable and interesting
Summary: 4 Stars
An emotional, harrowing, poignant and well written book. This revolves around two periods of time. Set in July 1942 during the roundup of Jews in Paris to send them to their deaths in Auschwitz, known as the vel d hiv.Ten year old Sarah Starzynski's life is forever changes when the Vichy police come to her family's apartment to arrest her and her parents, She hides her four year old brother in a cupboard and promises him she will return for him. She is deported to an internment camp in route to Auschwitz but escapes with another little girl and takes refuge with an old couple in a farmhouse near Orleans. The author succeeds in tying this to the story. The Nazis raid the house and take Sarah's critically ill friend Rachel to her death. Sarah remains hidden. she later returns to the flat with her adoptive grandparents and find a new family living in the apartment, as well as the corpse of her baby brother. De Rosnay
succeeds in conveying the horror and fear of the times and the love which Sarah receives from her adoptive family.
The story is paralleled by that of Julia Jarmond, an American born journalist living in Paris in 2002, married to an arrogant and selfish Frenchman. Jarmond begins work for her magazine on the vents surrounding the Vel d hiv, she stumbles upon Sarah's story and though pregnant her life begins to revolve around tying up the story when to her horror she discovers that the apartment her husband's family moved in to in 1942 that the the Jewish Starzynski family was brutally seized from.
Hence Sarah's story ties in with that of Julia and her family.
I would have preferred to read more of Sarah's life after the war, as a fascinating beautiful young woman living with her adoptive family, but this is mainly revealed through Julia's story.
De Rosnay is a talented writer who has crafted a thoroughly readable, penetrating, poignant and harrowing work, that I finished in two days. Succeeds in bringing to life the vel d hiv and the fate of the French Jews, and has informed many readers of the horrific events surrounding that ruthless action in which the French vichy police played an equal role to that of the German Nazis.
Book Review: Never to forget
Summary: 4 Stars
A popular type of novel is one that tells dual stories; one story takes place in the past, the other is set in the present, with both stories relating and enlarging upon the other. This is the technique used with some success in Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.
One part of the story is set during World War II and focuses on the life of ten year old Sarah, who along with her mother and father are rounded up by French police during the brutal Nazi-inspired raids that took place in Paris on July 16, 1942. Known as the Vel'd'Hiv, the roundup of tens of thousands of Jews who were eventually doomed to be exterminated in the Auschwitz death camps along with thousands of their children, was particularly infamous because it went well beyond even the stringent requirements of the Nazi's and was more the result of the zeal of their French collaborators.
Nearly 60 years later, Julia Jarmond an American journalist living in Paris with her French husband and young daughter stumbles across the story of Sarah while researching an article about the Vel'd'Hiv. In fact, Julia discovers to her great amazement and consternation that the apartment her in-laws had lived in for decades had been the apartment from which young Sarah and her mother and father had been dragged in the middle of the night. As they were harried and threatened, amidst their cries and terror, Sarah managed to hid her young brother in a locked closet to which she kept the key, planning to return to him in a day or two.
But will she be able to escape her captors and return to free her little brother? Most of the tension and the powerful emotion of the book centers on Sarah and her desperation and despair. By comparison, Julia's life seems less compelling, despite her struggles with her husband and her inner turmoil as she tries with increasing urgency to learn the truth about Sarah while at the same time facing up to the truth in her own life. Certainly there are few modern day problems that can be compared to the horrors of the Holocaust, but Sarah's Key is a novel of remembrance, first and foremost, honoring the victims of the Vel'd'Hiv, and urging the modern reader never to forget.
Book Review: Sarah's Key is Sensational
Summary: 5 Stars
It's Paris in July of 1942. Ten year old Sarah Starzynski hears pounding on the door of her apartment. It's the French police sent to round up her family on the orders of the Germans who are occupying the city. Thinking they won't detain her for long, she locks her four year old brother in a secret cabinet promising to return for him.
In Paris 60 years later, journalist Julia Jarmond is assigned to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv-the round up of all the Jewish families in Paris. While doing research for her article, Julia discovers the story of the Starzynski family and soon becomes deeply involved in a quest to find out what happened to Sarah Starzynski-and even finds a shocking connection to her own family.
Sarah's Key is a remarkable story. I had never heard of the Vel d'Hiv-a dark chapter in France's history. It is most shocking that these Jewish families were not detained by the Nazis but were rounded up by the French police force. Their own countrymen whom they relied on for protection betrayed thousands of them-men, women, and children and sent them to their doom. Sarah's story is especially heartbreaking. Even as she is going through the horrors of being sent to the camps and separated from her family, all she can think about is getting back to her apartment in Paris and getting her brother out of his hiding place.
I liked how the book switched from Sarah's trials in 1942 to Julia conducting her research of the round up in 2002. Even as her personal life unravels she continues her mission to learn if Sarah escaped or was sent to Auschwitz. Julia would uncover another piece to the puzzle and then it would switch back to Sarah's story relating what really happened. I was left wanting more after every chapter and just had to keep reading to find out what happened next. The story flowed beautifully and has really stuck with me since I put it down. I have read several books about the holocaust and this is one of the best. I would say if you were going to read one book this year on the holocaust make it this one! It's one of my best reads of the year so far and it will break your heart.
Book Review: gave me goosebumps
Summary: 4 Stars
WWII. So many stories, so little time. But while most of them focus on the Nazis and their treatment of the Jewish people, "Sarah's Key" is about the Velodrome d'Hiver, the round-up of the Jews not by the Nazis, but by the French police. Actual French gendarmes rounding up their own countrymen to send them to Auschwitz. It's horrifying, heart-wrenching, terrible.
This novel is split at first between Sarah's point of view in 1942 and Julia Jarmond's point of view in 2002, a journalist writing about the round-up in Paris sixty years later. Reading Sarah's story, I was biting my nails, nervous and horrified at her experience when the police came, and in the camps. She was 10 years old. 10. When it was Julia's time to speak, I practically skimmed her story to get back to Sarah's. They eventually merge in the middle and it becomes Julia's voice for the rest of the book, and I have to admit, I was a tad disappointed to no longer hear from Sarah.
The way the two characters are connected is surprising and terrible. Everything that happened to the Jews in WWII was surprising and terrible, but this twist in the story, what Sarah found when she returned to Paris and the connection to Julia and her family is emotionally disturbing. The author holds back the secret for as long as possible before it's necessary for her to reveal it. She definitely knows how to keep the reader reading!
I had goosebumps when I finished reading the book. It's a good ending. I must say I wasn't a huge fan of Julia because she could get a bit over-emotional at times, but the ending wraps it all up nicely and makes up for that. The chapters are short and quick and help with the pace of the book. I do wish that we could have heard from Sarah a bit longer...
It's hard reading a book about so many people suffering. But it's a way of letting them know that you remember and will never forget. WWII was a devastating time for the entire world, and it's hard to believe that people could do such awful things to fellow humans. Even though it was before my time, I read those stories so that I will remember.