Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Many people recommended this book to me, most memorably Ruth in Florida and Ellen at my company holiday party. It seemed to be a darling of book clubs and the fiction table at Barnes and Noble. I found it to be familiar in some ways but unique in others - overall, I really enjoyed it.

It used to be that having two alternating character narrate a story between two time periods was unique in construction. Now it seems to be a fashionable way to write. I can see the appeal; it can serve as a contrast and as a way to keep the audience's attention. This book followed that format and while I didn't find it tired, I did find it familiar.

One of the stories is about Sarah, a young girl whose family is taken in a deportation of Jews from Paris by French policemen during 1942. The other story is about Julia, a modern-day news reporter who is covering the 60th anniversary of this event. While Sarah's narration ends about two-thirds of the way through the book, Julia follows several stories related to the deportation, one of which intertwines with her own family's history.

The scenes where Sarah is in captivity are heartbreaking but not as graphic as other Holocaust novels I've read. Not to say that her experiences aren't devastating - they are - but de Rosnay's depiction of Sarah's despair is subtle and through 9-year-old eyes, without the knowledge we have of what actually happened to deported Jews in the Holocaust. I thought this book was really well-written and well-thought out. Both Sarah and Julia's characters were carefully developed characters and I couldn't wait to read more about each of their stories.

I also enjoyed reading this story after finishing Little Bee, because they both shared the theme of a middle-aged woman forming a relationship with a younger girl who had been through horrible trauma. It was interesting to compare with Five Quarters of the Orange as well, since that focused on German occupation in a small French town during WWII.

Definitely recommended.