Thursday 18 July 2013

Review: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.


Book: Sarah's Key

Author: Tatiana de Rosnay

Pages: 293

 How Long it took me to read: 2 days.

Plot summary: July, 1942, Paris France: ten year old Sarah wakes up to a nightmare. The police wake her family up and want them to pack a few of their belongings and accompany them, as they go door to door arresting Jewish families. Sarah in an attempt to save her four year old brother Michel locks him in their secret hiding place, assuming they will be back soon and there was no need for him to go through the ordeal. She promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.

60 years later: Julia Jarmond is an American in Paris, a journalist she is working on an article about the round-up of the Jewish families sixty years ago. She stumbles across Sarah’s story and can’t help but find out more about the girl. Did she get to come rescue her brother? Did her family survive the Holocaust? Where is Sarah today?
The stories of these two women collide and connect even sixty years apart.

Characters: There are our leading ladies, Sarah and Julia. We meet Sarah as a ten year old stuck in a nightmare and we see her go from a regular ten year old to a tortured and broken girl. The weight of her brother waiting for her makes her grow-up in weeks. She changes from a happy, carefree child to a scared and worrying mess. I loved reading about her and her journey to find her brother. I liked Sarah’s parents, they sound like sweet people who were broken up the atrocities they were mete out.

Julia, is a forty something American with a 11 year old daughter of her own and is married to a charming albeit slightly cruel French man. Her marriage isn’t doing too well and even after spending 15 years in France she is still  having trouble truly belonging. I also really liked her daughter, Zoe, who is wise beyond her years and spunky and a great support to her mother.

There are some amazing secondary characters- the Dufaure family in particular are lovely, they adopt Sarah after the war and are kind and strong and simply great. In Julia’s world I also like her grandmother-in-law, Mame, who is a strong character.

What I Liked: Quite a bit.

The book consists mostly of alternating chapters between the two time periods. I love books that exist in the then and now. I loved that about this book as well. Furthermore, the chapters themselves are pretty short, somewhere between one to three pages, which is a good thing. When alternating between two people and two time periods, it’s good to have shorter chapters so one doesn’t get so immersed in one world that it takes time to snap out of it when it’s time to read about  the other perspective.

I loved Sarah’s portions of the book.  It was heart-breaking to read about what was happening to her family. But it was interesting to see her live through a nightmare and her quest to get back to her brother.
I also loved the history in the book. 

I am a bit of a history nerd and anything about a historic event makes for a good read in my book. Even if the event in question is a sad one. I knew nothing about the Velodrome d’Hiver round-up and this book made me aware of a really dark chapter in history.

The writing was good too as was the pace of the book.

Also there is a whole lot of Paris in this book and that is never a bad thing! Ever!

What I didn’t Like: I wasn’t a huge fan of the Julia portions of the book. I didn’t think her story and her dilemmas were nearly as critical and important as those of Sarah. Her failing marriage and her challenges didn’t hold a candle to Sarah losing her family and the trauma she lives through.

The alternating perspective chapters stop somewhere in the middle of the book, basically we stop seeing Sarah’s world mid-way and then we are left with Julia trying to find out what happened to Sarah and her family. So we have a whole lot of Julia in the second half, given that I wasn’t enjoying Julia to begin with, 

I wasn’t thrilled about being stuck with her in the second half of the book.

Also the ways in which the two women are connected is a little forced; I don’t want to give away spoilers so I won’t say much but these women are too easily and too conveniently connected.

Also Julia finds Sarah’s whereabouts a little too easily…I mean the world isn’t that small! Finding a person who was last heard of 45 years ago can’t be that easy.

General Thoughts: This was another book on my wish list for a long, long time. I hadn’t seen it in a bookstore ever and on online bookstores it was always a little too expensive for my liking. Till finally last month is was available in paperback and was affordable. Yay!

I first heard about the book when the movie based on it came out. You can see the trailer HERE. It sounded amazing and I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, so now that I’ve read the book, I am trying to get my hands on the movie.

The book didn’t really live up all that I was expecting, in the sense I thought it would be amazing and I’d love everything about it…it wasn’t bad. Not even close, it just didn’t live up to my insane expectations.

Will you like it? If you like then and now books you probably will. Also if you like a sly history lesson in your fiction you might enjoy this.

Rating: 3/5

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