Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

I know I'm a little late arriving to this party, but I finally got around to reading Sarah's Key.  Part of my tardiness involves the unavailability of this book in our library; but the other part largely involves my state of mind.  A Holocaust novel will more than likely entail gruesome, graphic, and emotional issues.  I didn't think it would be fair to delve into a topic as great as this without the proper mental and emotional preparedness required.  As predicted, Sarah's Key not only includes difficult-to-imagine and heart-wrenching tragedies; but it also tackles the challenges of keeping a secret and the profound consequences generations endure once those secrets are revealed.

Sarah's experiences as a Holocaust survivor are revealed both through an omniscient narrator and that of Julia Jarmond, a character who finds herself indirectly linked to Sarah's past.  The novel begins in Paris, July 16, 1942.  Sarah and her parents become victims of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, torn from their homes in the middle of the night by Parisian police officers, to be marched to their certain deaths.  Sarah hides and locks her brother Michel in a secret cupboard with the promise to return for him, keeping the key concealed and on her person throughout her entire ordeal.  It is the first of many of Sarah's secrets to which we become privy, secrets which ultimately make us readers question in what ways Sarah is a survivor.

Julia Jarmond also carries her own secrets.  A present-day American working in Paris as a journalist, Jarmond is asked to investigate the Vel' d'Hiv roundup for its 60th Anniversary Commemoration.  Through her investigation, she not only discovers a piece of history that few Parisians remember or even know about but she also learns of Sarah's personal story and uncovers pieces of Sarah's mysterious past, a past to which Jarmond finds herself associated.  Conflicted with whether or not to reveal these secrets, Jarmond makes difficult choices.  The decisions she makes and the secrets she reveals profoundly affect her personal life and the lives touched by Sarah.

Sarah's Key is a beautiful novel and brings to life a piece of history to which I had not been aware.  I enjoyed the theme of secrecy.  Characters are not the only elements of the novel hiding valuable pieces of their past.  The omniscent narrator has a secret of its own.  Readers do not learn of Sarah's name until the halfway point in the book.  Through her fluent prose and thematic structure, Tatiana de Rosnay led me to think about the motives of people who choose to lock away certain aspects of their lives.  Do we really want or need to know about a person's past?  How will peoples' lives be changed when secrets are revealed?  and How much of a ripple effect will those revelations create?

Other great books to note regarding the Holocaust and World War II:

     *  The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (one of my Top 10 favorite)
     *  Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian
     *  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows