How quickly it goes... Time, Love, Life*

Ghosts from PROLOGUE of ‘Drums of Autumn’ by Diana Gabaldon

“I’ve never been afraid of ghosts.  I live with them daily, after all.  When I look in a mirror, my mother’s eyes look back at me; my mouth curls with the smile that lured my great-grandfather to the fate that was me.

No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands, laid on me in love unknowing?  How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh leaving their remnants to live long past the grave?

Still less could I be afraid of those ghosts who touch my thoughts in passing.  Any library is filled with them.  I can take a book from dusty sheves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheet of words.

Of course it isn’t these homely and accustomed ghosts that trouble sleep and curdle wakefulness.  Look back, hold a torch to light the recesses of the dark. Listen to the footsteps that echo behind, when you walk alone.

All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future.  We look in the mirror and see the shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway.  By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.

Each ghost comes unbidden from the misty grounds of dream and silence.

Our rational minds say, ‘No, it isn’t.’

But another part, an older part, echoes always softly in the dark, ‘Yes, but it could be.’

We come and go from mystery and, in between, we try to forget.  But a breeze passing in a still room stirs my hair now and then in soft affection.  I think it is my mother.”

‘Sarah’s Key’ by Tatiana de Rosnay

To Sum it Up:

De Rosnay tells the story of Julia Jarmond, ‘une américaine’ who has lived in Paris for most of her life with her Parisian husband, Bertrand Tézac.  Journalist Jarmond is asked to write a piece on the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup in Paris that occurred July 16, 1942.  She has never heard of this piece of French history and upon beginning research on the topic, she finds that the event has been severely underreported.  That day, 13,152 Jewish people were arrested in Paris by the French police.  Of those numbers, 5,802 were women and 4,051 were children.  Around 7,500 Jewish families were held in the Vel d’Hiv with no bathrooms and very little water or food for five days before being shipped to the three labor camps outside of Paris (Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande) and later to Auschwitz, Germany to be exterminated.  Jarmond finds that her husband’s family, the Tézacs, are involved in a web of secrets held between themselves and a Jewish girl who had been taken in the roundup named Sarah Starzynski.  Jarmond experiences trying times in all areas of her life while attempting to unearth the secrets of the Vel d’Hiv, the Tézacs, and Sarah Starzynski.  Sarah’s Key is a page-turning tale of French history, culture, love, and one woman’s promise never to forget.

Discussion:

Before reading this book, I had not learned very much about France’s role in WWII.  France’s motto ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’ (Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood) and their overall democratic demeanor throughout the years seems to have broken during the second world war under German occupancy.  It seems like they have kept it somewhat quiet until recent years for good reason, due to the event’s barbarism.

Sarah’s Key is written in an interesting style, joining Sarah’s story from 1942 with Julia’s story from present day Paris.  De Rosnay alternates stories in the beginning between chapters, which gives the impression that the two stories will come together eventually.  I found that the style was somewhat confusing, but it definitely kept me anxious to find out what was to come for each of the two women.

One of the ways De Rosnay unites past and present is through the apartment in which Sarah grew up and which the Tézacs purchased after the round up.  She creates different time settings in this apartment in 1942 and two separate generations afterwards.  The apartment stood as a reminder of the trials Sarah was forced to endure, how the Tézacs dealt with the tragedy introduced into their lives, and Julia’s discoveries.  De Rosnay when asked about her inspiration for Sarah’s Key replied, “I have always been interested in places and houses.  And how places and houses keep memories, how walls can talk.”  If the walls of that apartment could talk, they would have quite a bit to say.

At the end of the novel, De Rosnay leaves the reader guessing as to what happens to Julia once she moves to NYC.  I would like to think (and I’m a romantic) that she and her daughters can make a new family without Bertrand.  I want her to have a happy life and I want Sarah’s son William to be a part of it.

In order for an author to bring history back to life, they need to be able to do enough research to bridge the past and present.  De Rosnay did a terrific job of learning the ins and outs of her characters and who they would be in the historical times in which she chose to write.  Sarah’s character was a normal child who was hardened by the events in which she suffered as an eleven year old girl.  I was glad to find that Sarah never fully got over the events in her past in this story, because I believe it would have been unrealistic.  I felt that the entire book was well choreographed to make the past and present both seem plausible and true.  I find that it is interesting to read historical fiction because it gives us a taste of not just the events that passed, but how people related to and coped with the things with which they were presented.  It is always important to know about history; how human beings have changed, and how similar we are to our ancestors.  It puts humanity in perspective to try to understand how our forefathers lived.  Just like the quote used in relation to the Holocaust, in history is it is important to “Remember and never forget.”