Sarah's Key (Final)

Sarah's Key- Tatiana de Rosnay

I would completely 100% recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good book. It is full of twists and turns, makes you laugh, cry, feel sympathetic, basically everything. And I know its sounds cliché, but this book is that good!

*The rest of this post definitely contains spoilers; don’t read if you plan on reading this book!

First off, I totally did not see Bertrand’s dad’s revelation about finding Michel dead in the cupboard after Sarah came back to get him. That was completely unexpected for me. Well, actually not completely. I kind of guessed it when Bertrand’s mom told Julia about them buying the apartment, and Sarah’s story left off before she found out what had happened to her brother (because it was revealed in Julia’s story). But still, I never expected it to go down like that and Julia to uncover a dark family secret that was never even told to Bertrand’s own children (yeah, imagine their surprise and confusion..) Either way, it was still exciting to finally figure out what happened to Sarah’ and how her life turned out after her escape. 

As exciting as it was though, I wish it wouldn’t have stopped right with Julia and William. I wish something could have continued, or we got a glance into their future (c’mon, write a three or four page epilogue!!!) I guess the way they glanced at each other at the end should have said it all, but I’m still bitter.

While I’m talking about the plot, I’m going to contradict my previous post and change the shapes of their stories. Where I last left off, Sarah’s life was in pretty bad condition. She was a Jewish girl living in Europe during the time of the Nazis whose life was turned upside down by the roundup. However, she miraculously escapes from the camp she was in and doesn’t get caught, her life took a turn for the better. But after finding Michel dead, it has gone down and up and down and up. The author goes on to reveal to the reader about how the impact of one event shaped the rest of her life. Her story is interesting, she had all these ups and downs, but she seemed to struggle internally, and not let her family know of what was truly going on in her life and how her life was forever changed by the Vel d’Hiv. Her ups seemed to be presented opposite-more externally, as displayed by her son’s ignorance of her past in France. Now I would think that Sarah’s story arc is “Man in Hole.”

In this section, I would definitely say that Julia is also “Man in Hole” The reader saw a lot more of the struggles and challenges that she was facing as opposed to just Sarah’s story. Her pregnancy was obviously an up to her, but it came with a complementary down in the form of divorcing Bertrand.  She did end up moving back to America, but her conflicts did not resolve once she left France.

One thing that really sticks out to me when reading this book is not forgetting the past, and choosing to reminisce about something rather than pretending it never happened. Not only is Julia discovering a part of French history by writing an article about it, but also the reader (if they’re anything like myself) is learning about specific events that occurred and were unaware of. I obviously know what the Holocaust is, but I didn’t know that French soldiers executed Nazi orders against their own citizens. This book serves as a tribute to the past (a specific event in this case) but also how the past has affected the present and how it will continue to affect the future.

Now onto my non-fiction book...