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awesomedee 's review for:
Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
Wow. Two books in a row that spoke of the big Jewish roundup by French police during WWII... I'd never even heard of this before! (Paris by Edward Rutherford is the other book, it is briefly mentioned). This book is written in alternating voices: Sarah, the 10 year old Jewish girl who was taken with her parents away from Paris, and Julia, a modern day American/Parisienne journalist trying to uncover Sarah's story. The premise here is that Sarah locks her little brother in a hidden cupboard when the police come, thinking she will be able to come back shortly to rescue him. But she is taken far away and struggles to get home. We find out early in the book that during this period of history many non-Jewish French families suddenly found newer/bigger/cheaper/nicer apartments to live in that had suddenly been vacated by Jewish families "for unknown reasons." Apparently the French people overall totally ignored what was happening around them. Julia's husband's grandparents were one of these French families who moved into a better apartment. There is a huge family secret surrounding this and no one will talk about it. At about page 80 I suddenly suspected that the grandparents found the little boy and raised him as their son and that Julia's husband's father was that Jewish boy and this was the secret. I actually thought that if this was true then this was a terribly written book and totally unrealistic. Thankfully that is not the route the story went; it was far more heartbreaking. Then Julia goes through this whole have an abortion or not thing, and that really annoyed me. Her husband didn't want to be an old father so he told her to get an abortion or end the marriage. Well by how much she complained about him up until this... I was ready to huck the book out the window at this point. I could have done with less of the modern day "poor me" side of the story and then this book probably would have been 5 stars. If anything, read it to learn about what hate does to people and what fear does to people. Read it and try to understand how humans can treat other humans like nothing, or less than nothing.