Thursday, September 29, 2011

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay

Wow! The horrifying hook in this book about the Holocaust is that is tells the story from the point of view of a ten-year-old Parisian girl named Sarah rounded up with her parents by the French police in 1942. Because she doesn't know what is going on around her, she locks her little brother in a hidden cupboard in their house, sure that she'll be back in just a few hours to let him out.

Of course, she isn't back in just a few hours, or days, or weeks.

This story is interspersed in the story of Julia, an American researching this event for a French magazine as she navigates the pitfalls of her marriage and family. That part was far less interesting to me.  I did end up feeling a little gypped in the end because I wanted to hear more about Sarah's life and less about Julia's. In the end, my outlook on the French didn't exactly improve.