Blue Centerlight Pop

I will confess that the first time I picked up this book, I did not want to read it. My name is Sarah, I have a little brother, and I’m jewish. I was afraid it would hit a little too close to home, but I am so glad I ended up reading it. When I did read it on a recommendation from my Mother, I found out I had more to relate to the book than I had imagined. I’m a journalism student with an itch to travel and live abroad, and one of the main characters is an American journalist.

Synopsis from Publisher’s Weekly:
“From Publishers Weekly
De Rosnay’s U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d’Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél’ d’Hiv’ roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand’s family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand’s family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay’s 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia’s conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah’s trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.”

The novel alternates between two stories, that of Sarah Starzynksi, and Julia Jarmound, an American journalist living in Paris with her husband. Julia, and the reader, learn what happened in 1942 to the Jews living in Paris. And what happened, to the Jews, and to Sarah’s brother is not easy to stomach.

I knew that the authorities in France collaborated with the Nazi’s, but I did not know the extent of it. From reading this novel, I learned that ordinary policemen rounded up their Jewish neighbors, and I saw my emotions of shock and horror at this revelation shared by Julia. By giving a modern perspective on this tragedy, De Rosnay is also able to explore modern guilt about the Holocaust, or in some cases, the lack of it.

I thought the alternating perspectives of the American Journalist living in Paris and learning about Sarah, and Sarah’s story itself worked seamlessly. I wanted to know what happened to Sarah as badly as Julia did by the end of the novel.

Julia learns about how those in France reacted to the Holocaust, and she learns of collaborators, of righteous Gentiles who acted justly despite the enormous risk, and of those who were indifferent and sat idly by. I was reminded of the famous Elie Wiesel quote, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

I think the main strength of this novel is its honesty. I’m a journalist, I value the truth, and I think this book, while it is a work of fiction, is emotionally honest. Sarah and Julia are real, fleshed out characters who act like flawed human beings and not like tropes of victims or journalists. The ending of is not tied up neatly in a little bow, and I appreciated that about the story. The author lets her characters be complex, and at no point talks down to the reader or preaches, which I think can be a problem on occasion with Holocaust narratives not written by survivors.

This book is haunting, and stayed with me long after I read it. It is the best book that I have read in the last year, and I highly recommend it, especially to fans of historical fiction.

The author of this book is @Yansor on twitter, and her website can be found Here.

–Sarah
Currently listening to: “Make a Deal with the City”–East River Pipe

Word of the Day: Empathy: the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.