Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
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Book Reviews of Sarah's Key
Book Review: Painfully predictable
Summary: 2 Stars
Just finished reading this book for a book club tonight. I was really into it for the first half, and I didn't mind the way the short chapters jumped back and forth from the past to the present. I found the chapters from the past, with Sarah's story, to be interesting, with not a lot but enough suspense. However the book was dreadfully predictable and so unbelievable. As others have mentioned, the characters were flat and cliche'. I just did not believe that a woman who seemed otherwise happy with her life would have her life turned so upside down by this assignment for work, and how predictable and convenient that the apartment she was about to move into was the same apartment Sarah had been taken from (gee, didn't see that coming *sarcasm*). After Sarah's story abruptly ended, it was all down hill from there. I did not care about or believe Julia. I found her completely self absorbed and SELFISH! I did not believe she would truly become so invested in finding out about this woman (we are never led to believe that she is privy to all the details of the same story we are). I did not believe the father-in-law Edourd would become so affected by the story only after Julia makes it her life's mission to find out about Sarah. And she didn't care in the least about opening up a sad past for people who either had moved beyond it or didn't know about it, it was all about her and her desire to find out more. I predicted nearly every step of the story, and literally rolled my eyes when the baby's name was finally revealed (duh). The back and forth with William - he won't talk to her, then he does, then he disappears again, then comes back, then (once again) will he talk to her? snore! And they both just happened to have had divorces and move to NY? I also agree with the others, the writing was juvenile, almost insulting in places. The book had a lot of potential but fell very flat. Kind of wishing I had spent my time reading something else.Book Review: Loses momentum towards the end
Summary: 3 Stars
This book hooked me in early and fast. There are two parallel storylines. In 1942, a Jewish family living in Paris are rounded up by the police. Ten year old Sarah locks her four year old brother in a cupboard to keep him safe, promising to return for him. This part of the story centers on a real event: the round up of 10,000 Jews in Paris in July 1942. Meanwhile in 2002, Julia (an American journalist living in Paris) is researching the events of July 1942. She quickly discovers a personal connection between her family and Sarah's family and this gives her the impetus to keep investigating to find out what happened to Sarah.
The first half of the book alternates between Sarah's story and Julia's story, but then Sarah "goes silent" and it's up to Julia to find out for us what happened after that.
I was riveted to this book for the first two thirds, but then it lost momentum for me. The most interesting thing about Julia's story is the hunt for Sarah and yet in the end finding out through her what happened is simply not as satisfying as it would have been to find out through Sarah's perspective. Julia's family is also a collection of one dimensional characters so never takes on much depth. The ending was also highly anticlimatic: you could see it coming a mile off but it seemed to take forever to get there.
Nevertheless there is a lot to like here. Sarah's story is memorable and really got to me. I learned about a period in history that I didn't know about. The writing style and short chapters also make this a quick and easy read. (In many ways it reads more like a young adult book.) And the first two thirds are genuinely compelling.
If you enjoyed this you may also like The Hand That First Held Mine which employs a similar plot structure.
Book Review: The Banality of Evil and Tatiana's mid-life crisis
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm giving this three stars because it educates about an important historical event, it led to some interesting conversations with my husband, and the style is not overly-pretentious. It is written at the middle-school level, and would be appropriate for that population were it not for one expletive-strewn paragraph about sex and the persistent theme of middle-aged married life - a topic of limited interest to most middle-schoolers.
Following the page-turner formula of tiny chapters alternating between past and present, Sarah's Key is a quick and easy read. There are some editing problems and typos, which are annoying in any book.
The most compelling questions raised by the book are 1) how do people react to the evil of others, 2) are complicity and apathy to evil in themselves evil, and 3) how should one react to those who are complicit or apathetic to evil? The character seemingly based on Ms. de Rosnay herself, is a simple, upper-middle-class journalist with a gorgeous, vapid French husband. The author's provenance (also hinted at in the novel) assumes well-bred young ladies will enter genteel, educated professions. The writing style is often clumsy and simplistic, but at least it doesn't presume to be "literary" like the insufferable Sarah Dunant.
Read it to learn something about the Vel'd'Hiv, about French collaboration with the Nazis, and to spur discussion about our relationship to evil. If you're really interested in these issues, see Max Ophul's The Sorrow and the Pity and read Hannah Arendt'sEichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. This book is a starting point for people who have no prior exposure to these issues.
Book Review: Sarah's Key
Summary: 4 Stars
Julia Jarmond is an American journalist, living and working in Paris. She is married to a Frenchman. Around the time of the sixieth anniversary of the July 1942 round up and incarceration of thousands of French Jews in the infamous Veldrome d'Hiver,Julia is assigned to write an article about it. While researching for her article, she discovers that the apartment which her husband is having renovated for them was once the home of a little girl named Sarah. Sarah and her family were among those who were taken by the French police and eventually ended up in a camp outside Paris. When the round-up began, Sarah hid her little brother in a secret closet and told him to stay there and he'd be safe. She promised to come and get him. She took the key to the closet with her. At the camp, Sarah was separated from her parents who were sent on to be exterminated. Sarah manages to escape and is taken in by a French farmer and his wife. They go with her to Paris and find that the apartment is occupied by another family who know nothing about the secret closet. When Sarah opens the closet, her brother is dead. Sarah returns with her adopted family and later, when she is grown,moves to the United States where she marries an American. Julia becomes so interested in her story and the information that she painstakingly finds that she is determined to find Sarah and learn what happened after she went to America. Julia's marriage is in trouble and she and her husband divorce. Julia moves back to the United States with their children.
This story is both fascinating and sad. It depicts the horrors of the treatment of the Jewish people and the shame of the French involvement in their tortures. It reminds us not to forget this deplorable time in which so many lives were unnecessarily lost, and those who survived were unable to forget what happened.
Alma Winters, Author-Once Upon a Time Tales
Book Review: Worth the Read, but I Would Have Loved to Read More About Sarah and Less About Julia.
Summary: 3 Stars
I was stuck in the Charlotte airport and was browsing in the bookstore and saw one lonely copy of Sarah's Key. I had heard from a few people it was a really good book, so I picked it up. (Airports are one of the few places where I'll buy new books).
Sarah's Key is a historical novel in which Julia, an American ex-pat living in Paris, who through a confluence of work responsibility and personal ties, begins researching the story of a Jewish girl who is picked up by the French police as a part of the Vel' d'Hiv' round-up in 1942. For the first 150 pages or so, the chapters flip-flop between Julia's life in present day Paris and Sarah's life in 1942 Paris. About mid-way through the book, Sarah's voice drops out as Julia continues her research and gets closer to discovering Sarah's fate. Eventually, we learn through Julia what happened to Sarah and the impact her story continued to have on people's lives sixty-plus years later, despite it being hidden for so long.
The part of the book focused on Sarah and Vichy France was fascinating. I don't know much about what happened in France during World War II and I had never heard of the Vel' d'Hiv' round-up. Sarah's Key shed some light on the complex relationship the French government and people had with the Nazis during the occupation and the varying reactions to what was going on in their home country. On the flip side, the part of the book about Julia's life didn't really do it for me. It wasn't bad, it just didn't add that much to the overall arc of the book - and I'm all about connecting history with current events and trying to apply the lessons learned. Ultimately, I just found Sarah's part of the story much more compelling, but I still ripped through it during my time in the Charlotte airport and the flight home, so clearly it wasn't that bad.