This book is a page turner - and I learnt a thing or two about World War II (and trust me, being born and having spent most of my teenage years in a town deeply affected by the way, you really think that you have heard it all). The Vel' d'Hiv roundups are an episode of the past that the French can not be proud of (and I don't even think we are taught about it at school - I sure was not).
This is a book which is beautifully written and I encourage you to read it. If you do, please let me know your thoughts. Here is a synopsis of the book.
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 more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment