First, I love Paris, and I love the French language, and I love learning about World War II. So it's got that going for it. Julia describes why she attracted to Paris and she says, "It was during my adolescence that I felt the first yearnings for France, an insidious fascination that grew stronger with the passage of time. Why France? Why Paris? The French language had always attracted me. I found it softer, more sensual than German, Spanish, or Italian," (45). Listening to French is one of my favorite things to do. It's so elegant. I took several years of French. I love the language. I love listening to people speak it and I love reading it. And there are quite a few French words thrown in there. I love that I understand them and how beautiful they look.
I've learned a lot of things about WWII from this book that I didn't know. And if it's as she says in the book, it's not something that is documented in a lot of books, nor is it taught in French schools (or any schools for that matter). Julia is a journalist for an American magazine in Paris and she's doing an article on the Velodrome d'Hiver which was the Nazi-ordered but French police-enforced roundup of the Jews in Paris. At the site where the Velodrome in Paris used to stand, there is a small plaque that reads:
"On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Velodrome d'Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget!"So the book alternates between Julia's story of uncovering the mysteries behind the Vel' d'Hiv' and Sarah's story, a little girl and her family that were part of the roundup in Paris and were shipped to camps in Paris. I won't tell you much more than that, because that would probably ruin a lot of the story for you. But the things Sarah sees and experiences are sickening as one can imagine. And the information Julia finds out about the roundup--including how her husband's family is tied in to all of it is equally sickening, as well as interesting, and really, just sad. This isn't a book to lift one's spirits.
That said, there are many things I really, really, dislike about this book. Poor sentence structure and syntax. It sounds like it was written for 8th graders, and heck, maybe it was. I don't know. But I don't like it. And she has numerous sentences such as this: "I came to live in Paris when I was a little over twenty, after graduating from Boston University with an English major," (45). I cringe every time I read sentences like that. It just sounds...weird, like no one would talk that way. People don't say they graduated "with an English major". I graduated with a lot of English majors. And we all got to sit together at commencement too! Most people would say they graduated with their bachelor's in English.
On top of poor syntax and sentence structure, this book just lacks description and imagery, and I feel like it could really benefit from that. Her writing just lacks almost everything I love about writing. The use of figurative language to describe something. This description in particular was just awful: "We entered the apartment, fumbled with light switches. Nothing happened. Antoine opened a couple of shutters. The sun poured in. The rooms were bare, dusty," (20). She could have done so much more with this, using similes to describe what those things were like. Everything just seems really uncreative and straightforward and often her word choices just seem too light for the subject matter we're dealing with here. I expected things to be a lot deeper, and I was greatly disappointed in that aspect.
One other pet peeve. Sarah is referred to as "the girl" for almost the entire first half of the book. And even after her name is revealed to be Sarah Starzynski, she is still called "the girl". Sure, it's fairly safe to assume from the beginning that this girl suffering through all these horrible nightmares is Sarah from the beginning. But it's extremely annoying to have to read the first half of the book for that to be confirmed.
In all, I really don't know how I feel about this book so far. I love all of the new things I'm learning from it. I hate a lot of other things, like her writing style. As of now, I'd still recommend people read it. I'm very picky when it comes to liking a writing style, so you might enjoy this a lot more than I have so far. I've learned a lot about the roundup--things I had no idea even happened. And I'm a firm believer in educating people in all the details, no matter how disturbing, sickening. If people are educated, cruelty such as this can be prevented. So, if you're like me and you've never heard of the Velodrome d'Hiver, I'd recommend reading Sarah's Key, just for the information it has about the roundup. Or at least just google it and see what you find. I might even make another post with what I find so if any of you are interested in learning about it, you can check it out.
Sarah's Key is available on Amazon.com:
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