October Meeting, Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Some of the Zodiacs met for dinner at Auntie Pasta's.  Yes it's Italian food, but with no French restaurant in the area it seemed like a good compromise.  After all, Italy is right next to France.  Goodies were Delicious French Pastries.  Yum.  I had an eclair with fresh cream filling.

Members of the group enjoyed (if that's the word) reading Sarah's Key.  This book tells two intertwined stories:  that of Sarah Strazynski , a young French/Jewish girl who endures many tragic events during the holocaust and Julia, a contemporary journalist who investigates Sarah's life story.

The story of Sarah documents an until recently neglected part of French history:  that the French were complicit in the rounding up of Jews during World War II.  Sarah and her family are taken away from their Paris home by French police.  The central tragedy of the story is that Sarah tries to save her four year old brother Michel by locking him into a hidden cabinet in the apartment, intending to come back for him after what she thinks will be a short period of arrest.  She cannot return--her family is split up and her parents are sent to Auschwitz--and Michel is left to die.  Sarah is able to escape and she finds refuge with a French couple who raise her.  She immigrates to the United States as a young adult, marries, and has a son, cutting of all connections to her previous life in France and hiding her past.  But she is never able to free herself from the guilt about the death of her brother and the sadness of losing her parents to the holocaust.

In the modern chapters, Julia is led to investigate Sarah's story when she learns that her husband's grandparents and father moved into the Strazynski's apartment when Sarah and her family were sent away.  These chapters also tell the story of Julia's personal life:  her failing marriage, an unexpected pregnancy, and eventually a potential new love.

Some in the group felt that the end of the book--which is the end of Julia's story--was a bit too pat.  She gives birth to a daughter (who she names Sarah) and is about to become romantically involved with William, Sarah Strazynski's son.  We also talked about whether or not Julia did the right thing by confronting William with his mother's story.  He had never known about the horrors of her early years and this knowledge disrupts his life.  Do we have a responsibility to confront people with the truth whether or not they want to hear it?  Or did Julia do this to create a sense of closure for herself?