Book Review ~ Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Summary ~ Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay ~ From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.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.

Using a perfect blend of historical fiction and women’s literature, Tatiana de Rosnay has delivered a wonderful, heartbreaking and most memorable novel in Sarah’s Key.  Like De Rosnay’s character, Julia, I was not aware of the Vél’ d’Hiv’ roundups in Paris during WWII.  I love reading historical fiction because if the author did their job correctly, the historical aspect of the story is told well and accurately, the book leads me to questions and to finding more answers. 

Sarah’s Key is not a happy book by any means.  The two main characters de Rosnay introduces to the reader are Sarah and Julia.  Sarah was a little girl, living her life in Paris, France with her loving parents and little brother, when the Nazis started to ravage Europe.  The French police, working in time with the Germans through fear, rounded up Jewish families from all over France, but in this story the focus is on the Paris round up that led to the Vél’ d’Hiv’.  Thinking it was best to hide her younger brother during a raid on her family’s home, Sarah locks her brother in their secret hiding spot, a hidden cupboard in their room, and promises to return soon to free him.  Her plan goes up in smoke when she realizes that she and her parents are being deported from Paris along with thousands of other Jews. 

Flash forward to 2002 and we meet Julia.  An American, living in France for half her life, married to a Frenchman and the mother of a lovely and quizzical tween girl.  Julia is a journalist for an American magazine in Paris.  She gets assigned to cover the sixtieth anniversary of the Vél’ d’Hiv’.  While researching this horrible event in France’s history she discovers the story of Sarah and her family and the ties her in-law family has to them.   Julia is not only bombarded by the harsh discoveries of human suffering she makes while researching her article, she is also suffering in her personal life.  She is faced with decisions she never dreamed she would have to make and finds that life can’t be planned and doesn’t always turn out how you thought it would. 

To talk about the way the book read for a moment, I really liked how de Rosnay didn’t call Sarah or any of her family members by name until later.  It was representative of the thousands and thousands of Jews who were, in a word, exterminated by the Nazis in WWII.  We are like the people of Europe who didn’t do more than watch the Jews drag themselves, unwillingly out of their hometowns and to the camps.  The conditions described in Sarah’s Key were told so explicitly that I felt sick to my stomach at times.  That this is only a fictional re-telling of what happened every day is eye-opening. 

I believe that Sarah’s Key should be read by many and, like Julia, I hope that the horrors of WWII are never forgotten.  As the years go by we are losing war veterans and Holocaust survivors daily.  After they are all gone we will only have history and stories like Sarah’s Key to help us remember.

{Rating ~ 5 out of 5}

Book Review ~ Final Theory by Mark Alpert

Summary ~ Final Theory by Mark Alpert

Columbia University professor David Swift is called to the hospital to comfort his mentor, a physicist who’s been brutally attacked.  With his last words, the dying man gives his former pupil a seemingly random string of numbers that could hold the key to Einstein’s last and greatest secret.

Einheitliche Feldtheorie.  Einstein’s proposed Unified Theory – a set of equations that could explain all the forces of nature – would have revolutionized our understanding of the universe.  But Einstein never discovered it.  Or did he?

Within hours, David is arrested and interrogated by the FBI.  But they’re not the only faction pursuing the long-hidden theory.  A Russian mercenary also wants David to talk – and he will do whatever it takes.

On the run for his life, David teams up with an old girlfriend, a brilliant Princeton scientist, and frantically tries to piece together Einstein’s final theory to reveal its staggering consequences.

What a fun, terrifying and thrilling book this was!  Mark Alpert’s debut novel, Final Theory, helped to bring me out of my reader’s block and into a world that, if Albert Einstein had succeeded in discovering the Theory of Everything, would be a far more dangerous and scarier place than the real world already is.  Having a world renowned physicist (in the world of physics and mathematics) for a father may have helped me pick up this book based on the premise but it was the thrill of the chase and the characters that kept me reading. 

David Swift is leading a life as a divorced father, allowed to spend only a few precious hours a day with his beloved son Jonah, when his life is changed suddenly and drastically.  A friend of his has been tortured for information and is dying at a New York City hospital and David has been summoned to see him in his last moments.  It’s in this meeting that David finds himself on a quest to keep Einstein’s Einheitliche Feldtheorie safe from the monsters who are on the hunt for it, which led to David’s friend’s imminent death.  And so David goes on a dangerous, quick paced adventure that will reunite him with a woman from his past as well as a scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotic Institute, whom David had interviewed for a book he published about Einstein and his assistants. 

The characters in Final Theory are rich, special, well written and helped to draw me in to this great story.  I was continuously surprised with the plot twists and found myself exclaiming out loud, “Oh my God!” over and over at certain parts of the book.  That’s a good book if you ask me!  It had been a while since I read a real thriller and I enjoyed the quick pace and excitement that Mark Alpert gets across through the written word. 

The last real thriller I read was Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.  Last September, the Large Hadron Accelerator at CERN  under the France/Switzerland border (part of the focus of Brown’s bestseller), suffered a malfunction shortly after being turned on for an experiment that would possibly recreate the Big Bang within the particle accelerator.  (You can learn more about that experiment HERE.)  Well, this April, to help promote the May release of the film adaptation of Angels and Demons, Tom Hanks will flip the switch after repairs to the damaged magnets are completed.  This Hadron Accelerator is like the Tevatron at Fermilab, outside of Chicago, which plays a roll in Alpert’s Final Theory.  To learn more about the CERN event click HERE.  I could picture the film adaptation of Final Theory very easily as I was reading it and wouldn’t be surprised if we are lining up at the theatre in coming years to watch that very thing.   

{Rating ~ 4 out of 5}

Mark Alpert is an editor at Scientific American.  His job is to simplify “complex scientific ideas for the magazine’s readers.”  Alpert has made a little video introducing his book, Final Theory, which you can view below. 

Sunday Salon ~ February 22nd, 2009

Since my Sunday Salon post last weekend I started reading Mark Alpert’s Final Theory.  I had purchased this book at the PX last year when it was first released based on the premise of the story.  A thriller centered around the idea that Albert Einstein discovered the Einheitliche Feldtheorie, “… a set of equations that could explain all the forces of nature…” and the possibility of this theory falling into the wrong hands and leading to the probable end of the world.  WOW! 

Well, I have a personal interest in this story because my father is a physicist with “…broad research interests including quantum field theory, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum optics, general relativity, and non-neutral plasma physics.”  (As seen on Dr. Howard Brandt’s Wikipedia page.) 

Final Theory takes the reader from New York City to Princeton, NJ and then to Carnegie Mellon University.  When I was in junior high we went on a family trip to Princeton, NJ to visit the campus of the university and to see Albert Einstein’s house where he lived while a professor at Princeton.  Another draw to this book is the fact that my sister and her husband met while working on their undergraduate degrees at Carnegie Mellon.  It always helps when  reading a story and I have been to the places where the characters are. 

I had been in need of a distraction from our impending international move back to the States and I definitley found it in Final Theory.  I’m almost done with the book and will be posting my review this week.  By the way, I am really enjoying the book!

Book Review ~ The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee

Summary ~ The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee ~

In 1942, Will Truesdale, an Englishman newly arrived in Hong Kong, falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their love affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese, with terrible consequences for both of them, and for members of their fragile community who will betray each other in the darkest days of the war.

Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong and is hired by the wealthy Chen family as their daughter’s piano teacher. A provincial English newlywed, Claire is seduced by the colony’s heady social life. She soon begins an affair, only to discover that her lover’s enigmatic demeanor hides a devastating past.

As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine and converge, a landscape of impossible choices emerges—between love and safety, courage and survival, the present and, above all, the past.

Janice Y. K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher was not what I expected.  Not in way of the story but in how I wished to love it from beginning to end.  The first sixty pages or so were slow, unable to grasp my attention for more than a few moments at a time and were full of characters that I couldn’t become emotionally invested in.  Then the arrival of WWII and all that came with it turned the great city of Hong Kong and it’s civilians upside down and with those events a new book emerged to me.  A book full of mystery, deception, love, risk, and horrific descriptions of how brutal war can be. 

The Piano Teacher is the story of a young British woman named Claire, fresh off the boat in Hong Kong and fresh into a world she didn’t know existed.  She is married to Martin, an older Englishman who concerns himself with work at the Waterworks plant and not with the events that soon fill up his wife’s days.  Claire surprises herself by taking up a position with a Chinese family as their young daughter’s piano teacher.  The affiliation with the Chen’s opens a new world to Claire, full of party invitations, a whole new circle of people and an introduction to Will, the man who will sweep her off her feet and change her life forever.  Will has a story to tell but he doesn’t share details easily.  The first part of The Piano Teacher flips between 1952 and Claire’s torrid affair with Will and ten years prior, telling the stories of Will before WWII and the love of his life, Trudy.    

The Piano Teacher is a rich, disturbing and refreshing look at WWII.  It shows the reader the horrors that more than likely occurred on the other side of the world.  Living in Okinawa, I am familiar with the history of the Japanese invasion of this little island.  In The Piano Teacher you read of the Japanese invasion of another small area of the Orient.  If you are a fan of the 1987 film, Empire of the Sun, this may be the book for you.  Empire of the Sun is one of my all time favorite films based on the autobiographical novel by J. G. Ballard which tells the story of a young boy who is separated from his family when Japanese Forces invade Shanghai and he is sent to a work camp where he survives the war. 

If you have the patience to get through the first few chapters of The Piano Teacher, and maybe you will love it right from the start, this book is worth the time investment.  The characters become vivid and the story builds and builds as the war escalates and reaches the corners of the globe. 

{Rating ~ 3.75 out of 5}

Sunday Salon ~ Fuzzy

We have about 86 days until we move from Okinawa to the D.C. area.  It’s overwhelming, all I can think about and as it seems from the last post, last weekend, all I can inconsistently blog about.  I haven’t picked up a book in over a week now.  I had all my stampin’ stuff out over the last few days and made a few cards but I just put all that stuff away again.  I have been feeling a bit lost and am thinking that maybe it’s because I am not reading a book.  When I read a book, I find that it anchors me into something that has a beginning, middle and end.  It entertains me, makes me think and takes me away for a little while.  I think it might be time to pick a title from my TBR shelf and dive in.

Sunday Salon ~ February 8th, 2009

Just over three months.  That’s how much time we possibly have left in Okinawa before moving back to our hometown area of D.C.  It’s been a whirlwind of a stay here.  We arrived on this tiny sub-tropical island in May 2005 and have enjoyed so many aspects of living in a foreign country, traveling, experiencing new cultures and building lasting friendships with wonderful people from all over the U.S. 

While living here I have been able to read more books than ever but as the time winds down, I am thinking ahead to working again and getting back into the busy lifestyle that goes with being a Washingtonian and it’s getting harder to concentrate on the words in front of me.  I’m excited about the future and have found memories of the past.  It is the present that is challenging.  All the things there are to prepare for an international move, spending time with friends we may not see for a long time or ever again and finding the time to concentrate on reading when my head is spinning around the to-do list that never seem to end. 

I finished reading The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee last week and I am currently working on writing my book review.  I started a new book but feel that I need to take a break from reading for a few days.  I would like to make one more quilt before we move.  I made one the first year we were here and would like to take advantage of the time left to create another one for our new home in the States.  I keep procrastinating on deciding on a fabric medley and ordering it though.  We’ll see what happens. 

This weekend I found myself baking again.  Yesterday I made Parmesan Pull Aparts from my February 2009 issue of Gourmet Magazine.  They were easy to make and delicious, though a bit rich.  The recipe does call for a cup and a quarter of freshly grated Parmesan cheese after all.  Today I broke out my Martha Stewart Cookies Cookbook and made a batch of the Thin & Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies.  They are so good!

What have you been up to this weekend?  Do you have any big changes looming on the horizon, waiting for you too?  When big changes are making an impact on your life how do you deal with them?

Checking In

Well, I didn’t realize until a moment ago that it has been over a week since my last post.  Sorry about that.  I don’t know where the time goes and can’t quite wrap my mind around the fact that February 4th is coming to an end already. 

I’m still reading The Piano Teacher.  It was a slow start and I found myself very disappointed over that.  I was soooo excited about reading this book and when I didn’t find myself swept up in the story or by the characters, I wondered how this could happen.  Love, affairs, theft, WWII, Hong Kong, Japanese invasion.  How could this subject matter not lead to riveting reading?  Well I’m just approaching the middle of the book and am finally finding myself asking what will happen next.  What will happen to Will?  Will Claire get caught in her mischievous ways? 

What have you been up to?  Are you reading anything riveting or just disappointing?  What is next on your TBR list?