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Book Review of Sarah's Key

Sarah's Key
jscrappy avatar reviewed on + 59 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


The historical facts this book is based on (the round-up and deportation of French Jews by the French government in 1942) definitely deserve to be more widely known. However, I didn't particularly enjoy the book.

For the first half, the book moves between the story of Sarah, a 10-year-old girl caught up in the deportation, and Julia, an American journalist assigned by her French magazine to write a story about the deportations. Sarah's story is by far the more interesting and heart-wrenching, but it stops halfway through the book, and we are led the rest of the way by Julia, who is frankly, an irritating and unsympathetic character.

The story of Sarah and the others like her who were destroyed by their own country is indeede worth knowing more about, and that's the value of this book. The fictional story created around it is a throwaway.