Book Talk: Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah’s Key recounts the story of Sarah Starzinsky, a Jewish girl living in Paris with her parents and younger brother during the war. In every other chapter in the first half of the book the story takes us to Paris in 2002, where we follow along as American journalist Julia Jarmond researches the notorious Vel d’Hiv roundups in the run-up to the 60th anniversary commemoration of the event. The Vel d’Hiv arrests had been swept under the carpet by all the French governments since the war, until Jacques Chirac publicly addressed this black mark on France’s history in 1995 (full speech here).

Eventually we find out that the link between Sarah and Julia is an apartment on rue de Saintogne, in the Marais quarter of Paris, and the horrific events that took place there in the summer of 1942.

Sarah’s Key, like most books, has its flaws but it’s not my intention to be an armchair critic as the aim of this article is not to dissect its style and content. If I have one complaint it is that I wish Sarah’s character, and the harrowing experiences she was subjected to at such a tender age, could have been developed better by providing a bit more insight into the psychological trauma that she was going through.

So even if the plot is rather predictable at times and the ending a bit of an anti-climax, the book has one major redeeming factor: the Vel d’Hiv round-up of 13000 Jews and their subsequent incarceration at Beaune-la-Rolande, Drancy and Pithiviers, and the inhuman separation of all children under 12 years of age from their parents, who were then loaded onto cattle trains and sent directly to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, are well researched and bring to light a dark episode in the history of France that was considered taboo for over 50 years. The bottom line is that it was the French police, acting on the orders of the Nazis and the collaborating Vichy government, who rounded up the Jews; and it was the ordinary French people (concierges, teachers and so on) who betrayed them. As such, this book was an eye-opener because I, for one, had never heard about the Vel d’Hiv arrests or about the active part played by the French. Now, I want to know more.

So would I recommend Sarah’s Key? A most definite yes because, in spite of its flaws, it is a moving, heart-wrenching novel and it did the job its author wanted it to do: Zakhor. Al Tichkah. Remember. Never forget. For this alone, it is definitely worth a read.

Loree’s rating:  ★★★☆☆