Sarah's Key

I've seen Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay on the bestseller list for a long time, and last month my mom brought me her copy.  Add this book to the growing list of books about WWII, but this one is about the little-known Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in Paris where Jews were rounded up by the French police and shipped off to Auschwitz in July 1942.  I did not know about this particular gruesome episode, so the well-researched novel taught me another segment of history.

The narrative is divided into two alternating stories - Sarah in 1942 and Julia in 2002 who is a journalist uncovering Sarah's story.  The novel reads like a crafted story based on lots of research (rather like Good Things I Wish You which I blogged about on Nov. 30).  That is to say, it does not read like a character-driven novel, but something that has been pieced together.  I did not especially like the juxtaposition of a horrific atrocity against a woman whose marriage is falling apart, although both stories are linked by the theme of secrets (and how bad secret-keeping can be).