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Saturday, May 10, 2014

Book Review - Sarah's Key


Sarah's Key jumps between Paris in 1942 and 2002.  The 1942 story centers around the "Vel' d’Hiv’ Roundup, which I had not known about prior to reading this book.  Sarah is the girl in 1942.  Her story was heartbreaking and captivating.  I wish the whole book had been about her.    

In 2002, Julia is a journalist investigating  the Vel' d’Hiv’ Roundup.  She becomes personally invested in Sarah's story and is determined to find out what happened to her.  I wanted to like Julia.  I wanted to care about her problems, but it was hard to go from chapters about a 10 year old girl trying to survive the Holocaust, and then jump back to a grown woman who has a mean husband.  Granted, the 2002 story gets more serious as we go along, but I just couldn't care as much as I was supposed to.  

I really liked this book, but felt like the ending left a little to be desired.  Spoiler ahead!!  Maybe the author's point was that even the people who physically survived the Holocaust didn't have much chance of a happy future.  I just wanted more for Sarah.  

There's a movie, too.  I'll probably try to watch it at some point to see how it compares.  

It seems like I've read a lot of books lately where the author jumps from the past to modern day.  It's like they decided historical fiction is boring and we have to have a modern connection for it to stay interesting.  Generally, I find that I like the old story and think the modern characters are kind of obnoxious.  

Have you read this?  What did you think?

1 comment:

  1. I actually read this book at the start of this year too. I agree, I liked the 1942 part of the story better than the 2002 part. I agree too that the older story was so emotional from the beginning, that it was hard to jump back to the modern story line. I didn't know there's a movie, I'll have to check it out.

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