Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > Sarah's Key

3.5 stars. This is a dual-timeline historical fiction novel, about the arrests of Jewish families in France during WWII and their terrible experiences, focusing on the actual historic Vel' d'Hiv' roundup in July 1942, and a modern journalist's investigation of that event and her search for some of the people involved.


The inside of the Vélodrome d'Hiver bicycle stadium, demolished in 1959

In the 1942 timeline, in Paris: a 10 year old girl is arrested with her Polish mother and father in the middle of the night. Her 3 or 4 year old brother, terrified, hides himself in their secret hiding place, a hidden cupboard. Sarah locks him in, assuring him that she'll be back in a few hours. Instead her family is taken to the Vélodrome d'Hiver, a bicycle stadium, where they and thousands of other Jewish families, including many children, were held in deplorable conditions, without enough food, water or sanitary facilities, for 5 days before being sent on to prison camps. The family, frantic to get their little boy, plead with the police, but nothing is done.

In the other timeline, the year 2002, also in Paris: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist married to a Frenchman, who has lived in Paris for about 25 years, is asked to write an article about the Vel' d'Hiv's roundup on its 60th anniversary. As she investigates, she finds that her husband's family home is where Sarah's family lived before they were arrested. Julia feels compelled to investigate this particular aspect of the tragedy, and gets involved deeper and deeper, despite resistance from her husband and others.

This book had a major impact on me, and when I first finished it I thought it was an easy 4 stars, despite some significant weaknesses in characterization and what felt like author manipulation. But in the cold light of morning those things are bothering me more. The characters, especially the present-day ones, are mostly stereotypes: the suave, cheating French husband, the wise-beyond-her-years daughter, the over-eager nurse at an abortion facility, people hiding old secrets with a stiff upper lip. It's pretty well written, but they're still thin. It's also an emotionally manipulative book, from Sarah's experiences to Julia's love life. I felt like the author was too obvious in pushing the reader to feel in certain ways.

But there were a couple of unexpected twists for me in the plot, and the Vel' d'Hiv' plotline is truly compelling. It brought tears to my eyes. I don't regret reading it at all, if only because I'm glad to know more about this tragic historical event.