"TO DIE WILL BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE"

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The World War II...a time in the world's history marked by murder, despair, regrets and ,why not, adventure. Yep, I had a pair to say the word "ADVENTURE" and if in your little mind you think I mean about the fun,laughter and good times such a thing as an adventure brings to someone's life you, friend, are wrong..adventure is not always a good thing, or let's rephrase it, an entirely good thing. All those who took their time and review their possibilities of survival and knew they wouldn't make it unless they face a time of dangerous adventure, dark adventure...an adventure they didn't knew how would it end or if it would end at all. And most of them, died during that adventure but they did with the taste of freedom in their whole bodies. That's the main reason I decided to use the word "adventure". I just can't help it, I always wanted to live in that time just to know the feeling of being in an adventure no matter how dangerous it might be. I know I will never know, wishing will be the only feeling I will ever sense on that matter. The World War II brought a lot consequences, some of them good, like the UN, some of them very bad, like the deaths of millions of innocent people..but consequences in the end, consequiences of human actions, brought upon ourselves by our own stupidity. I may live in the 21st century but I can't help but feel the need to awknowledge those whose lives where marked by a time of darkness and death. There is not other better or more fantastical place than a war zone, where true heroes are out there, shown to the world to see.

Is it terrible for me to think of a war as magical? I do not know the answer but I do love the concept better than a made-believe land or world.

If you are still with me, after that overdramatic introduction, I want to invite you to read the book that brought all that thinking to my little brain. It is a historical fiction but the best historical fiction you can possibly think of, the time? WORLD WAR II..( a big DUH! is in order)...the place? FRANCE (my favorite place in the whole world, the country I will live in about 10 years, mark my words!). To be more accurate it is July 1942, the last time many jewish family saw the sun in freedom and in life during the occupied France. The last time Sara Starzynski ever knew how a family was suppose to be.



But the Vel D'Hiv Roundup didn't only affect those french jew who lived through it but also many years since then, the story of it all touched the journalist Julia Jarmond's life. After finding out that her new home was the home of a jew family of the unspeakable Vel D'Hiv roundup and getting to write about that day for the 60th anniversary, she decided to look up for that family and without knowing, started an adventure of her own, that would change everything.



Julia will become obsess with Sarah's life, she will do anything to know what happened to her after that day that she lose everything. With flashback chapters, the reader will be able to follow the adventure Sarah went through to be able to escape and return to Paris to save her little brother that was hiding when the police came for them that morning but after an unsurprising end to that adventure, Sarah will be an enigma both to the reader and Julia.



I couldn't help but cry in so many chapters that it is difficult for me to point them out and it will also be a Ginormous spoiler for you, friend. And you have to understand that I read this last december, after over a year of search. I wanted to read this so badly since '10 that I would always look for it in bookstores and such. I know there is a movie, here is the link to the trailer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzDZ9e3mG... ... I haven't seen it yet. I needed to read the book first, a matter of choice. I do not know how faithfull it is to the book but the trailer looks good and can't wait to watch it.



The end..oh the End! It made me feel butterflies. If you get what I did at the end please TELL ME! because I think I was the only one to realize what I realized. Warning: it is an ending that is not an ending. It suggests so many things that I couldn't believe Tatiana de Rosnay left it there but so glad a the same time.

5 stars are not enough. I knew since the beginning that it was a fiction but it felt so real since the beginning! Please! PICK THIS BOOK UP! A must-read, indeed! =)



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