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shakespearesgirl 's review for:
Sarah's Key
by Tatiana de Rosnay
There are spoilers in this review, but only for the first 75 pages or so, and nothing that you probably didn't already guess from the book's summary.
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I got about a third of the way in and had to stop.
On it's own, Julia's story would have been great, I think. What I got through of her chapters was well-written. I liked Julia, and I liked that she seemed to be coming alive for the first time in years as she slowly noticed how little her husband seemed to care about his family and as she began to research Vel d'Hiv. If the novel had centered more firmly around Julia, I probably could have finished it. However, this is not the case.
Parallel to Julia's story is Sarah's story, and while I fully knew what I was getting into when I started reading it (it tells you on the back cover that she locks her brother in a cupboard), I was not expecting Sarah to understand what she had done quite so quickly. And that was my downfall with this book. Ever since I became an aunt, I haven't been able to stomach any kind of violence or neglect against children, intentional or otherwise. Sarah understands very quickly that she's done something that might kill her brother simply by reading her father's face. I might even have been able to stomach that, but de Rosnay kept drawing attention to deaths going on around Sarah--quick deaths that were gruesome to see/read about, but that would have been relatively painless and instantaneous for the victims, with the growing, looming implication that Sarah's brother is going to suffer and hurt and know what is happening to him.
And that's what I couldn't stomach. I couldn't stomach the protracted, drawn-out death imagery being constantly related to a child not much older than my niece. I'm actually kind of disappointed, because I'd heard good things about this book, but I can't do it. De Rosnay is too good at implying things.
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I got about a third of the way in and had to stop.
On it's own, Julia's story would have been great, I think. What I got through of her chapters was well-written. I liked Julia, and I liked that she seemed to be coming alive for the first time in years as she slowly noticed how little her husband seemed to care about his family and as she began to research Vel d'Hiv. If the novel had centered more firmly around Julia, I probably could have finished it. However, this is not the case.
Parallel to Julia's story is Sarah's story, and while I fully knew what I was getting into when I started reading it (it tells you on the back cover that she locks her brother in a cupboard), I was not expecting Sarah to understand what she had done quite so quickly. And that was my downfall with this book. Ever since I became an aunt, I haven't been able to stomach any kind of violence or neglect against children, intentional or otherwise. Sarah understands very quickly that she's done something that might kill her brother simply by reading her father's face. I might even have been able to stomach that, but de Rosnay kept drawing attention to deaths going on around Sarah--quick deaths that were gruesome to see/read about, but that would have been relatively painless and instantaneous for the victims, with the growing, looming implication that Sarah's brother is going to suffer and hurt and know what is happening to him.
And that's what I couldn't stomach. I couldn't stomach the protracted, drawn-out death imagery being constantly related to a child not much older than my niece. I'm actually kind of disappointed, because I'd heard good things about this book, but I can't do it. De Rosnay is too good at implying things.