This book came highly recommended by a few friends and became my 2 day 'beach read' in Palm Beach this vacation. It's one of those books that, although not memorable in it's writing, is a compelling story. It starts out in 1942 Paris where a Jewish family is awoken one night by French soldiers at the door, telling them to gather a few things and come with them. Young Sarah makes the decision to lock her young brother Michel in a closet with the promise that she would be back soon to get him out. She and her parents were taken to a stadium in Paris, along with thousands of other French Jews and locked up for several days, then taken to an emcampment and eventually split up, parents going to one death camp and children to another. Sarah escapes with a friend, desperate to get back to her little brother.
One of the many horrors of this book is that French soldiers (not Nazis) were the ones who gathered up their own people and sent them to their death, innocent children and their parents. Mixed in with each chapter is Paris in present day where Julia, a magazine journalist, is working on a story of the anniversary of this tragic event. She is American but married to a Frenchman and soon finds out that her husband's family (unknowingly) moved into the apartment of Sarah's family soon after they were taken away. The guilt of Julia over not knowing about this dark period in French history, along with putting the pieces together of young Sarah's journey back to try to find her brother, leads her to rethink her life and marriage. She becomes obsessed with finding Sarah and finding out the heartbraking fate of her little brother. It's a tragedy all around but definitly kept me up and reading under my umbrella in Fla.
I just read Sarah's Key as well while in Orlando. I loved it. Like Those Who Save Us, it plunges the reader into the horrors of war. I really thought she captured the French point of view towards the Vichy gvt's role in the war.
ReplyDeleteI just read this book about a month ago, too and it definitely was a page turner, which is surprising, given both of its tragic and disturbing story lines. Now I'm finally reading the Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, so I think by the time I finish that, I won't have the strength left to begin Those Who Save Us.
ReplyDeleteI have a question. Right now, it seems like there are a lot of depressing and sad novels set during World War II (I think it started with Atonement...at least that's when I noticed it). A couple of years ago, it was the whole Anne Boleyn time period. Before that, Oprah popularized novels about depression era, southern, impoverished dysfunctional families.
Why do certain historical time periods suddenly become the settings for popular novels?