I read this a few months ago and this review has been sitting in the to-do pile for months. Then, it arrived via package as part of this mail exchange book club and I just finished re-reading it today.
I can't say it improved the second time around, but I did gain an appreciation for the importance of remembering this lost story now told that I didn't really grasp the first time.
Sarah's Key takes place in Europe, France in particular, during World War II. I know there are probably hundreds of details about this war I still have no knowledge of, I was surprised to have never heard of the Vel d'Hiv, or Velodrome d'Hiver, a round-up of French Jews by the French police in July of 1942. Thousands of men, women, but mostly children, even those born in France, were taken out of their homes, sent to the Vel d'Hiv, which was an arena used for biking events, separated from their parents, then sent to French concentration camps before most were sent on to the Polish concentration camp, Auschwitz.
Sarah's Key is really two stories, the historical one, with a thoughtful third person narrative following Sarah's nightmare. The second is a misused melodrama involving an American journalist, Julia Jaramond, living in France with her French husband and daughter, reporting on the 60th anniversary of this lesser known event in French history. All of these chapters are written in a tiring first-person and ultimately consume the historical story once the character's lives cross.
For me, it's hard to separate my appreciation of what I believe the morale of the story to be: to never forget past horrors so that we'll be less likely to repeat them, from the journalist's I-don't-love-my-husband-anymore banality, especially when Sarah's story all but ended with 100 pages left. The author forced me to wade through her modern mama drama to get Sarah's experience, and by so doing, completely overshadowed the more important story.
If you enjoy different angles concerning the Holocaust and historical fiction about this time period, you might like this. If it had really been about Sarah, I might have, but as this is actually Julia's story, I didn't.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Book Review #76 - Sarah's Key
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6 comments:
This was our book club selection for August... and I agree I would have enjoyed more of Sarah's story rather than Julia's - especially Sarah's story as an adult and her feelings towards being Jewish (we obviously know she chose not to tell anyone), but what were her inner struggles about it.... because I like knowing that other people have inner struggles, too!
Yes, that's it exactly. I wanted to know Sarah's story from the same narration as earlier in the book - not solely from the inference from Julia's later discoveries. I found the difference in intimacy with Sarah huge. It bothered me that the author felt Julia's development was more important. At least, by continuing her story instead of Sarah's - whose did continue for 30 years past that horrible summer, it felt that way.
I continue to think about WHY the author structured the story in the way she did. In the afterword, she wrote that she felt the story needed a contemporary angle to be told correctly. Maybe because so few people know about the Vel d' Hiv (did I spell that wrong?). But I felt that Sarah's story lost most of its emotional power by being swallowed up in Julia's stuff. I think she (the author) tried to keep us engaged in the Sarah story by telling us how obsessed Julia was with Sarah, but again: too much telling, not enough showing.
I continue to be disappointed by this book, even though I am glad I read it because I didn't know anything about the french occupation.
I don't think I minded the contemporary angle. I just think she was misguided thinking Julia needed to have so much personal drama to motivate her to search out Sarah's story. Did I need to know how she met her husband or about her gay friends or how awesome she looks in a bikini? I don't think so. I think she should have used Julia to tell Sarah's story - and I think she thinks she did. But really she sold out Sarah to make Julia's made-for-TV saga into a book. Really disappointing - and, like you, it only gets more so the more I think about it!
Funny, this is the same reaction I had to A. Manette Ansay's "Good Things I Wish You." It was trying to tell the story of the Schumanns and Johannes Brahms, but it would have been far better without the contemporary story added in and emphasized a bit more than I cared for.
Haven't heard of this book but the cover is beautiful.
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