My Thoughts on Sarah's Key

I thought that this was a really interesting story. I am always a little bit fascinated by stories about the holocaust because it was too horrible. In my wildest, worst nightmare, I would never be able to imagine the horrors that happened at that time. This book was interesting to me because I had never heard of the Vel' d'Hiv roundup before reading it. Just like Julia, I was the uneducated American.

This book brought up a lot of issues that most people skip over. It is easy to see how horrible it was for all of the families that were rounded up, but that time in world history affected everyone (obviously some more than others). I thought it was an interesting perspective to think of how Edouard was haunted by his involvement in the roundup. Even though it wasn't his choice to move into the apartment and he didn't know about the boy, he still felt at fault for the situation.

I also thought that it was spot on that the general consensus was to forget the horrible things that have happened in the past. We are all guilty of that. Our society is so self involved that we do not pay attention to anything that doesn't directly affect our day to day lives. We are constantly gaining new technology that only furthers our emotional and social hermitism, and furthers our distance from anything that came before this second in time. Our growth is so stunted by technology. It provides great miracles, but it also hinders us in other aspects. I will get off my soapbox now, because I could probably write pages and pages just on that subject alone....back to the book.

I have to admit that I was expecting a lot out of this book because the story line had so much potential, and in the end I was a little bit disappointed. For me, the characters fell a little bit flat. I really liked Sarah...obviously. Anyone who chooses not to like her is probably a heartless wench. She showed such a strong example of resilience. I would not be able to do what she did. I would have withered and died. As for the rest of the characters, at least the rest of the adult characters, I thought they seemed selfish and uninteresting. I was disappointed that I never felt any connection to them. They were just too average to be interesting. That is probably unfair, but that is all I could think when I finished the book. I got the feeling that I was supposed to think that Julia was a heroine, but I never really felt that way. It feels so harsh to write it. So I guess I won't say much more, because I don't know that the characters I create are any better. Plus, I can't think of an adequate way that would really express what I think about them.

I am really looking forward to the next book....have we decided what it is going to be?