Book Review - Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Synopsis: Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

First Line: "The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door."

Random Quote: "They walked down the narrow street, the police ordering them on. The girl glanced at the strangers watching them from windows, balconies, doors, from the sidewalk. Most of them had empty, uncompassionate faces. They looked on, not saying a word."

Review: This is not a perfect book, but I enjoyed reading it. The parallel stories of Sarah, taken away by the Nazis carrying the key to the cupboard where her little brother is hiding, and Julia, an American journalist living in Paris, are very compelling throughout the first hal

Monument to Rafle du Vel d'Hiv' - Image by j&mgorman via Flickr

f to two-thirds of the book. I loved learning the history of the Vel d'Hiv and I loved the sense of the two different voices intertwining to reveal both the history of roundup and deportation of the French Jews and of their own separate, but interconnected stories.

Where things got dicey for me was in the last part of the book where the voice of Sarah drops out completely and Julia, her pregnancy, and her marriage problems take over. I just didn't care much about whether or not she should stay with her philandering French husband and the implied potential love story between Julia and Sarah's son was just too pat for me.

Still, read this book for the first wonderful bit and read it to learn some history you didn't know and read it for a little tragedy and a little bit of hope in a dark and scary time we should never forget. You won't be sorry you did.