Title: Sarah’s Key
Author: Tatiana de Rosnay
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Source: bought it
Blurb: 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.
Even if I disliked this book, I’d still hate to criticize it because the story is so beautiful. Basically, it’s a story inside a story – the main story follows Julia Jarmond, an American who lived half her life in Paris, married to a husband she begins to question her love for. But then, after doing an article for the magazine she works for on the Vel D’Hiv roundup in July 1942, she finds a connection to a Sarah Starynzki, and she starts piecing Sarah’s untold story together.
Sarah’s story… it was really hard to… I don’t know, process. Digest. That this kind of thing, this story, this history, is real. It REALLY happened, and just because she was a Jew, a little girl like Sarah and thousands of other children were sent to hot, bare, dirt-floor sheds with no food or water to suffer for days and then to gas chambers. To die. For no reason at all. And, the thought that scared me the most as I read this – who’s to say history can’t repeat itself?
Going back to Julia, the main character’s story, her passion for finding the missing links to Sarah’s escape and life after the war, is so touching. Despite marriage problems, her 11-year-old daughter, a child she doesn’t want to “get rid of” but her husband does… she completely devotes all of her time, all of her little energy, to finding Sarah’s family and helping her father-in-law, who plays a small role in Sarah’s life as well, find a sense of closure Sarah herself never had. It’s so beautiful.
And this was a really sad, depressing book (My mom says I read too many sad books!) I mean, seriously, I hadn’t even anticipated how deep and depressing it would be – and it’s a WWII story, I normally do prepare myself for the worst.
But, really, this was an incredible story. I highly recommend it…. and I can’t wait to see the movie!
5 stars!!!
