Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay

I picked this one up because I received de Rosnay's newest novel as a review book from Book List and I figured I'd better brush up a bit on the author's previous work. In Sarah's Key, a woman in current Paris seeks information about the round-up of the Jews during the WWII occupation, specifically about a Jewish girl and her family who once lived in the same apartment. Throughout her search she is faced with the dark facts about the round-up while also dealing with problems in her own life.

I think book was warmly received, and it's hard to speak against it because of the subject matter—the roundup of Jews in Paris, France, is not a well known piece of history and deserves some highlighting, but I found this book tedious and depressing. Granted, the subject matter is depressing, but tackling it from the view point of a repressed woman in current times just added to the heaviness of the story. I see that parallels are being drawn between the time periods—repression then, repression now, and de Rosnay does a fine job of drawing the character of the French citizens, both now and then, but I expected something that felt uplifting, and never really found it. What I did find was florid and overly dramatic writing, and my attention waned about half way through.

Book 48 on my way to 53.