by Tatiana de Rosnay
Oh, my heart.
It aches.
As you might well expect, given that this book simultaneously takes place in Paris around the milennium, and in Paris in 1942 in the midst of the Holocaust.
Where, on a July afternoon, a Jewish family is one of many taken during the Velodrome d'Hiver roundup, an event I was unaware until this novel despite having traveled to Paris several times in my life and, I'm nearly certain, walking in the neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower that has since been built over the former site of the Velodrome.
A Jewish family with a daughter and a son, who manages to conceal himself upon the arrival of the police in a small hidden closet, locked in by his sister who - innocent of the meaning of the roundup - promises to return shortly. She, and her parents, are then sent away.
Sixty years later, an American journalist living in Paris with her family begins researching an article about the Vel' d'Hiver roundup and discovers a distant connection to her husband's family, which grows closer to home the more she follows the trail. As she does her relationship with her husband, and her understanding of his family, starts to come into question.
I can't say much more about the book other than to say you'll want to keep reading all the way through to find out what happens to the family, to the young girl Sarah and to the journalist Julia, and to find what, if anything, is the absolution that can be offered in the wake of such devastation.
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