Sarah's Key

I loved this book. I was hooked from the beginning. A must read.

I liked this book. The history was interesting and the story good. Just like in the story sometimes the past will draw people together and sometimes tear them apart.

And with that, I am officially done with all the readings for my Into to Fiction class

I don't think I learned anything about fiction

But this book wasn't awful so let's give my teacher some credit. Just ignore my newly found hatred for Dr. Jenkyll and Mr. Hyde.

I read this in one day. The story kept me enthralled and I needed to know what happened to Sarah and her brother.

i didn't really care about the “present day” POV until nearly the end but that was my only issue with this book!

i started out wishing that it was only from Sarah's POV in the 1940's but after finishing the novel, i'm glad that it's both present day and the 40's.

i keep seeing a lot of people talking about the nightingale by kristin hannah and i think that's the book i was hoping this would be.

WOW!! That`s all I can say about this book!

Oh dear. I hate going against the flow of public opinion, but this book was just not my kind of read. I got through the first few chapters, thinking it was going to get better. It didn't. Finally, I decided to jump to the end, to see what was going to happen. The ending intrigued me enough that I jumped to the middle and read a few chapters there. Back to the near end to see how the relationship played out. Then back toward the front to pick up where I'd initially stopped....Well, you see where this goes.

Not sure this counts as a read, given that I read the front, the end, the middle, the end, the middle, the front. But I feel I read enough to warn the wary: This is a hyped-book that did not (for me) live up to the hype. The writing (the translation?) felt like it was a color-by-the-numbers story.

This book was wonderfully written and was hard to put down. I was so tired that I could barely hold my eyes open but I couldn't stop reading. I couldn't stop thinking about the story and the characters, past and present although the relationship of woman in the present is a bit distant and cold. The book is sad but the story is enveloped in so much mystery that you don't want to stop until you have all the answers - until the secret is not a secret any longer. I learned a bit about France while reading this book. I used the internet to look up unfamiliar terms, see pictures of places and to hear French words pronounced. I feel like I just got back from a trip to Paris but with a heavy heart.

I kept shunting this one to the bottom of the pile, as I wasn't enthused about diving into a WWII Holocaust story. Because of the good reviews, I tossed it into the book bag and dragged it along with me on my last roadtrip. Glad I did - I couldn't put it down. It's a depressing topic, but well told, and covered an aspect of the Holocaust I was unaware of.

Somehow I wound up with two copies of this book. That should have been a clue that I needed to read it, but it sat on my shelf for about a year and a half before I picked it up. (I blame the cover art.) This historical fiction novel had dual storylines, chronicling the lives of both an 10-year-old girl in the 1940s and a present-day, middle-aged American, both living in Paris. Ten-year-old Sarah's family is Jewish, and the French police have come to arrest her entire family and 13,000 other Jews in the area to take them to the Vélodrome d'Hiver, a stadium used as a holding place before the Jews were transferred to concentration camps in both France and Poland. Sarah does not understand the implications of the police's arrival at her door, and hides her 4-year-old brother by locking him in a cupboard, promising to return for him. In 2002, journalist Julia Jarmond is living in Paris, working on a piece commemorating the 60th anniversary of what has become known as the Vél' d' Hiv' roundup. She is shocked at how little she knew about the city she had been residing in for 25 years, and even more shocked that the French people want to completely forget any responsibility they had in the roundup. In her research, Julia discovers Sarah's family, and — haunted by their story — determines to find out what happened to the little girl that disappeared from the historical records.

blergh. I am not sure whether I'm appalled or amazed at the chutzpah of entwining a love story with an exploration of the Vel' d' Hiv' roundup and deportation. And the author's choice to maker her protagonist an American is an interesting one–but one, I think, somewhat at odds with her message regarding France's blindspot to the atrocities of Vichy. The two-dimensional French and American families that populate the margins don't add much to the book. The writing is flat. The “love” story is just odd. Blergh.