For me, Sarah's Key is a study in contrasts. The first is the narrative structure (at least in the 1st part) which alternates between the story of Sarah, a young jewish girl caught up in event of the Vel D'Hiv in 1942. The other story is ex-pat Julia Jarmond who is a journalist writing about these events for her magazine. Julia discovers a link to these events through her french husband's family.
The next contrast is my reaction. I really enjoyed the first half of the book where the story alternated between Sarah and Julia. Sarah's story is quite compelling, giving a personal glimpse into an event where the child has no idea what/why the events are occurring. Julia's voice and story provided a bigger tableau on horrors of the holocaust, but also despite the events, some of the events have been forgotten. However, once the story completely focused on Julia, I quickly began to lose interest.
The last contrast for me is that I thought that the writing was not very good, especially in Julia's voice. Maybe I'm being overly picky, but the author often started paragraphs in a series of questions which I found very annoying. I felt like this would be a great book for young adults except that certain aspects of Julia's story are very adult-themed.Get more detail about Sarah's Key.
