Review: Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm actually glad it's over. Such an interesting feeling to finish reading a book and, instead of craving for more, be relieved I could get to the back cover.

The subject is important, even if the main character seems a little to obsessed with it to be real. The writing and proofreading are good, which is more than can be said of most books. And the book made me cry, quite literally, a few times.

I take one star off for literary effects I didn't appreciate. The story alternates between Sarah in 1942 and Julia in 2002, each gets a short few-pages chapter in turn. But Sarah is referred to as "the girl" in her chapters, even though her name is on the cover and the story is narrated from her point of view. It got annoying by page 30, but the name is revealed only on page 124. Forty pages later Sarah's chapters disappear and we are left with Julia. The same name-hiding trick is repeated at the end, which is only one of the ways in which the book makes a full circle and gets a little bit too "round".

I'm not sure I'm glad I read the book. It appears the author assumes that things that are not talked about are forgotten. But there are things I never talk about, and my parents never talked about them with me, which didn't prevent the pain going from one generation to the next. Sometimes pain is too deep for words.

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