Sarah's Key: A Novel

This is such a beautifully written book. It is heartbreaking and made me cry but an important read

In her novel, "Sarah's Key," Tatiana de Rosnay works to keep the atrocity of the Holocaust alive, known and unforgotten by ensuring that the modern reader fully understands the long-term effect of the Velodrome D'Hiver roundup of Jewish citizens that occurred in Paris in the summer of 1942. With knowledge comes regret and perhaps the ability to ascertain that such an event never happens again in the history of humanity. While the novel successfully reminds its readers that the past does not always marry well with the present--the sadness of old ghosts permeates and weakens pillars of hope and the right to happiness--main character Julia's personal quagmire--her unexpected pregnancy, her husband's failure to age gracefully and her anger with regard to what she perceives as the ambivalence of the French people as a whole--trivializes the impact of Sarah's ultimate decision to let the past win with an improbable ending that seems more an afterthought than an actual foregone conclusion. In order to underline the effect of the past on the present, the story is told from alternating perspectives that are relayed along with their 2002 impact as they are discovered. De Rosnay presents the events as they happen to ten-year-old Sarah Starvinsky who with her mother and father are forced by the French police to deport to an internment camp with thousands of other Jewish/French citizens. While researching a story commemorating the infamous events associated with the Vel D'Hiv sixty years later, journalist Julia Jarmond suspects that the family apartment which she, her husband and daughter are about to renovate and inhabit was acquired by her in-laws during that fateful summer of 1942. Bells of alarm trigger Julia's subsequent investigation of the property and its former denizens and what she uncovers disturbs not only her family's fragile equilibrium but shakes her faith in society's negligence in allowing such an event to occur and still call itself humane. Clever and precocious ten-year-old Sarah locks her younger brother in a hidden closet in their Marais apartment in order to hide him from the gendarmes when they arrive to take her family away. Although she physically survives a horrendous ordeal that will forever etch pictures of unspeakable sadness upon her mind, she must then live with the consequences of not only her actions, but those of a frightened world spinning out of control--a world where, in her eyes, safety no longer exists. De Rosnay drives home the point that the impact of this event on Sarah's ensuing short life symbolizes the death of the integrity of rational egalitarian society, where nothing can be counted on to go right--that personal gain and collaboration with humanity's enemy will come first if such atrocities are allowed to be forgotten without accountability. As a Holocaust story worthy of remembrance, De Rosnay's story hits its mark with a bleak reality that filters into the present day with all its uncomfortable implications as the story of the young girl and the journalist converges into one. However, even though Sarah's tale draws to its fizzling conclusion through Julia's intrepid efforts, De Rosnay muddies her primary message with too much sentimentality and coincidence with regard to Julia and her self-identity issues. Presented as an American in Paris--she has lived in Paris as a journalist, wife and mother for over ten years and yet she is still an outsider--Julia struggles with Bertrand, a husband she does not trust, her un-French viewpoint that clearly labels her as an American and her own feelings of failure with regard to not being able to conceive another child. When she discovers she is pregnant, her initial confusion gives way to joy until she realizes that her husband is happy with his life as it is--without an additional child. As she experiences a sense of disillusionment for all she has come to rely upon, Julia makes some hard decisions with regard to her future and must "come of age" in terms of who she really is. After discovering so many disturbing events that relate in a rather secondhand way to her extended family, it seems reasonable that Julia will indeed feel the effects of post traumatic stress in some degree. However, De Rosnay almost belittles the sadness of having her characters "move on" by throwing in the unsuspecting William as a romantic interest at the end of the novel. The two are drawn together by their knowledge and their participation in the denouement of Sarah's story. However, their entanglement seems contrived, unnecessary and uncomfortable in light of the more important "don't forget" Holocaust message. Technically, the book works well from the perspective of its alternating voices. Sarah's story is told in a third person narrative that strongly suggests the pain of a young child who separated from her beloved parents can only think of the devastating wrong she imposed upon her small brother. Julia's more contemporary first person account underlines the "sins of the father" theme of history penetrating modern life with its lessons in passivity and apathy. I listened to the unabridged audio presentation; the reader adequately captures the emotion and abject melancholy of the piece while still maintaining the listeners attention. Bottom line? "Sarah's Key" by Tatiana De Rosnay is a worthwhile Holocaust remembrance piece set in the France of 1942 and 2002. A young girl who may have escaped the death camps cannot move past the sorrow of an event for which she takes full responsibility. In 2002, a forty-year-old journalist researching the 1942 Vel D'Hiv roundup of Jews by the French authorities discovers a family connection that spirals her married life to an unhappy conclusion. As the mystery of Sarah's key is solved within the first two thirds of the novel, the technical addition of Sarah's voice is abandoned, replaced only by romantic contrivances by De Rosnay that attempt to pull the threads of the story together to create a happy ending. Recommended with reserve because of the rather hurried and flat conculsion. Diana Faillace Von Behren "reneofc"

Quite a moving story! Despite the real WWII history that inspired this novel, the author declares in a Reading Group Gold Selection on page 294 (Kindle), “I am not a historian and did not wish to write a historical novel.” But she did write a page-turner. The main historical event was the Vel’ d’Hiv round-up of French Jews by French Police under orders by France’s Vichy government, implementing Nazi policy toward Nazi goals. It occurred on 16 July 1942 in Paris. Thousands of Jews—husbands, wives and children—were deported to their deaths at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The book's characters and plot, however, are all fictionalized. Sixty years after the round-up, the heroine, Julia, becomes obsessed with discovering the full story of a 10-year-old girl named Sarah who was taken, along with her parents, but escaped. Sarah grows into adulthood in France and dies in America. We are led step-by-step as Julia gradually solves the mystery and then experiences the high costs of uncovering the secrets, which fall like dominoes, revealing the hidden facts. This forever changes relationships among the characters. A few friends warn her to be careful about opening Pandoras Box and hurting people, but she is haunted and cannot stop. Meanwhile, she becomes pregnant. There is conflict, with high-stakes consequences. As certain characters suffer failure, horror, guilt, stress, anxiety, fear, pain, depression, mercy, aid, support, and success, some old relationships deepen and are strengthened, but some die, and new relationships are formed. Key characters eventually thank her. In the end, we readers come to believe that everyone is better off knowing than not knowing. With open integrity comes freedom and intimacy, all in the pursuit of happiness. It’s impactful. And through fiction, the author convincingly makes the case that the world, and especially the French people, are better off, too, knowing more about and never forgetting this real, indelible, evil stain in France’s history. I join countless others who thank the author. More than 10 million copies have been sold in 42 countries worldwide.

This book kept me going from chapter to chapter. I loved how the chapters weren’t too long, so that the mixing between present day and the past kept me wanting to read on. Great story on an event I naively had no idea had happened!

"In the author's own words "This is not a historical work and has no intention of being one. It is my tribute to the children of the Vel d'Hiv." Although not as detailed as some historical fiction, this novel certainly succeeds in dragging the reader headfirst into the events of 16th July 1942 when French Police conducted a massive round up of Jews in Paris in order to "forward" them to Auschwitz.We are drawn into two intertwining stories, the first, that of Sarah, a 10 yr old girl who experiences these horrific events in 1942 and the second, contemporary story, that of Julia Jarmond, an American born journalist who is investigating events surrounding the Vel d'Hiv round up. As their stories unfold we see how the past is inextricably linked to the present and we share Julia's intense interest in the fate of Sarah and her family. This is a gripping, poignant story based on real events and is filled with vivid, charismatic characters. The dual time frame is never unwieldy and the reader is swept along by flowing, seamless writing from the 40s to the present day - symptomatic perhaps of how the events of the past still dictate and inform present events and how we should "never forget". I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a well written story with engaging characters and having an interest in World War II fiction is not a prerequisite. Sarah's Key is a story about people rather than events and Sarah will stay with me for a very long time."

I'd already watched the film so was prepared for the horror of Vel d'Hiv - a truly shameful part of France's history in WW2 which was hushed up until Chirac exposed France's role many years later. The war-time story alternating and linking up with the modern-day story-line has the reader gripped from beginning to end. This is a 5-star book.

I am amazed that this book has so few reviews because it was really a joy to read. It is a very moving story about the French Deportations during the Second World War, but at the same time is a story of a family in Paris in 2002. At first the Author tells the two stories seperately in alternating Chapters, until the two stories entwine and then is told from one point of view. Sad, and moving, the story grips you so that you just can't put it down and although we know all the horrors and abominations of that era, the Author doesn't dwell long on them,but still portrays the seriousness in a light, melancholic way. A story that you can't put down, and stays in your mind long after it is finished.

A very moving and sometimes disturbing story but an important reminder of the atrocities of war. Could not put it down