Many scenes left
me bewildered, but one especially stands out:
When separating
mother’s from their children, the Nazi’s did so with clever tactics. It pained me when Sarah and her mother were
sprayed with freezing water. Instinct
kicked in and mother and child loosened their grip on each other. This was the last time Sarah saw her mother.
Sarah’s Key, one of the most moving books
I’ve ever read, left me gasping, literally, even at the last page. An event so special took my breath away and
made me hold my children closer. When I
finally read the last words, I called my sister Becky, crying and contemplating
the story of Sarah’s Key. Becky had recommended the book to me and we
had been reading it together, calling every day to discuss the tragedy of WWII,
the evil of a man named Hitler, the horror of hate and the despair a young girl
named Sarah had to suffer.
When Tatiana de
Rosnay’s new book A Secret Kept came
out, I had to read it.
Like Sarah’s Key, it is beautifully written
and finds beauty in awful circumstances, even death, but unlike Sarah’s Key,
the story didn’t move me. A Secret Kept follows Antoine Rey, a
middle-aged divorced father through deep childhood secrets that he has to make
sense out of. Antoine’s mother died when
he was 10 and his father is a non-affectionate man who no longer feels the need
to be a parent. Antoine is close to his
sister, Melanie and together, they uncover secrets about their mother’s life
and unfortunate death. I appreciated Ms.
Rosnay’s effort, writing from the Antoine’s perspective, a male voice, and feel
she did justice to the task, but if the storyline isn’t enticing, then nothing
else really matters.
Writing is so
interesting because if you have a great character, but a slow-moving plot, then
the book is flat. If you have a great story but bad writing, the story doesn’t
work either. In other words, everything
needs to be flowing. The effort is
there, the writing is beautiful, I felt like I was really there in that small
French town in A Secret Kept, but by
the time it was all said and done, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing there.
