Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
I don't like books about the Holocaust. I have yet to read a Holocaust book that really made a big impression on me.* There, I said it. I have no soul.
So, I don't even know how it happened that BOTH of my book clubs selected Holocaust books last month. How did I let this happen? If I had to recommend one of these novels, it would be Sarah's Key.
From Publishers Weekly: "De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down."
I listened to this book, which helped with some of the French pronunciations. I probably cared more about the Julia character because of how other people treated her and despite her actions. That is a tough sell for a heroine.
The Book Thief is a young adult novel that sounded promising from the description, but was just so disappointing.
From School Library Journal: "Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA "
I didn't like Death as the narrator. I sometimes felt like the story was going to go in a weird, inappropriate place (though perhaps that says more about me than the book), but then it would step back. I think my main gripe is that Death would tell you what happens and then go back and tell you how it happened. I enjoy that type of story telling (in How I Met Your Mother), but for me, it just did not work for this book.
Kindle edition notes: The book contains quite a few illustrations that translate well to the Kindle version.
* Please do not interpret this declaration as an invitation to suggest Holocaust books that I might like. I've read a lot. It's too late for me.
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