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Summary and Reviews of Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (20):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 12, 2007, 304 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2008, 320 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

Soon to be a major motion picture!

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Reviews

Media Reviews

Sacramento Bee
Exceptional, emotional, and compelling…

Roberta, The Book Stall at Chestnut Court (Front Line, Newsletter)
I was overwhelmed by a novel that I had missed when it first came our way - Sarah's Key. It is a page-turner about World War II, the Holocaust and contemporary Paris. I couldn't put it down.

Library Journal
Starred Review. Masterly and compelling, it is not something that readers will quickly forget. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. 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.

Sarah Galvin, The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
Sarah's Key is told from both the perspective of an 10-year-old girl whose family is rounded up during the Vel D'Hiv in France in 1942 and an American who presently lives in Paris. The heartbreak is real, the love is true, and the need to find out how their two lives are connected made this one of my absolute favorites!

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Read-Alikes

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