Saturday Read: Sarah’s Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay

I’ll admit it: this week I fell prey to the “Recommended” table at my local book store. Being a bookseller, I find myself to be a bit of a book snob and will rarely listen to advice about my reading material. However, I am also a sucker for a nice cover (yeah, I judge a book by its cover) and “Sarah’s Key” indeed has a nice cover. So I picked it up, read a few pages and before I could resist, I was hooked.

By Alex

“Sarah’s Key” is a historical fiction novel that flip flops between two story lines: Sarah’s and Julia’s. Julia Jarmond is living in modern-day Paris. She is married to a man that she describes as a typical Parisian: good-looking, successful, but also very reserved and often, cold. They live with their daughter, Zoe, and also many secrets.

Then there is Sarah, a 10-year-old French Jew who is taken from her home and sent to a concentration camp during the 1942 Velodrome D’Hiver roundup in Paris. For those of you who have no idea what the Vel D’Hiv roundup is (don’t be embarassed – I didn’t either!), here is a crash course: Basically 13, 000 Jewish men, women and children were arrested and taken to the Veldrome D’Hiver (a stadium), right in the middle of Paris, where they were left for several days before going to the Drancy and Beaune-la-Rolande internment camps and finally Auschwitz. Now, even if none of the other words in that sentence meant anything to you, I know you recognized Auschwitz. And so you know the fate of these poor, innocent people. Sarah is taken, along with her mother and father.

Julia also happens to be a reporter for a French tourist magazine and is assigned to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vel D’Hiv tragedy. As she begins to dig into the terrible stain on French history, she stumbles upon a 60-year-old mystery that her husband’s family is working very hard to keep hidden. And once she stumbles upon it, she knows she has to get to the bottom of it, all while trying to save her crumbling marriage.

I like historical fiction. I started out as a history major in university and cried when I landed in Europe for the first time because of all the historical landmarks I was going to visit. So naturally, this is my kind of story. I had never heard of the Vel D’Hiv roundup, even though I consider myself to be someone who is very concerned about and affected by the Holocaust (I had a near breakdown in the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam) and I almost feel guilty about my ignorance now. However, I am happy that “Sarah’s Key” enlightened me and entertained me at the same time.

Both story lines are wonderful and like I said, simply hook you. I demolished this book in approximately 4 hours and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. People of all ages are able to connect with the characters and story, since at one point or another de Rosnay seems to elaborate and muse about every age. Because the story is based on a true event, it affected me even more. I often stopped and thought that the story I was reading could be a real-life account, sometimes having to remind myself that, “It’s not real, Alex”. That is how deep this one hits.

I recommend “Sarah’s Key” to everyone. Not only because it tells a great story and entertains, but because we owe it to the victims of the Holocaust to keep their memories alive and relevant.  The only way to keep history from repeating itself is to learn from our past, our mistakes, and “Sarah’s Key” helps us to remember and be thankful.