Sarah's Key

Tatiana de ROSNAY, "Sarah's Key"

There are things, I know, I’ll never forget: my mother’s voice, the taste of her apple pie, my dad’s advices (he had served as a soldier. In case of war, I would know what to do…) The first words my children said (Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa and Papa! The instructor's eyes when I was 5 years old, I fell into swamps, she was looking at me, I was sinking, disappearing… The first time I went to Paris, the old guard at the Musée d'Orsay. My first cigarette in the garage of a classmate, I was 13, I vomited… The first boy I kissed, I found it shocking, I told him ... The first time I got married, I swore "It's the last one!" It was indeed. The first book that made me cry, I remember like it was yesterday. I was coming back from a holiday, a couple of years ago. A night in April, rain, highway… No one slept in the car…

While my husband was driving in all seriousness, I was searching for some sweet-sounding music on the radio that would lull my children but there was only that wild music… Then I stumbled upon Tatiana de Rosnay, she was interviewed for her new novel, “Sarah’s key”. Her voice in the night, her feelings… It was cold, we had to turn on the heating… Everybody in the van was listening to her. Because of her voice and her emotion, there was no more rain, no night, no highway but only that woman who told in the radio about this little girl…

Paris. Summer of 1942. The second world war. The Shoah. The deportation of Jews. The round-up of the Vel d’Hiv. French policemen arresting thousands of Jews, knocking on doors, shouting and little kids crying because they didn’t understand what was happening to them. People behind curtains. Misunderstanding. Cries. Horror. Death soon. So many crimes…

Families crowded into the Velodrome d’Hiver. Heat. Suicides. Babies born. Babies dead. Separations. Forever. Dreadfulness. And shame. Silence. The years filling. Forgetting. A commemorative monument. Chirac’s speech. And my little ones, my husband and i, now, listening in the car...

Paris again. July 2002. Julia Jarmond, an American journalist has to write an article about the round-up of the Vel d'Hiv’s commemoration. She doesn’t know anything about this event. French people never talk about it. She tries to understand and begins to collect information and soon she discovers the crimes, the atrocities, she realizes horrors inflicted on thousands and thousands of people.

One day, she has to pay particular attention to a little girl, Sarah, who lived during the second world war. She investigates, as she puts in place pieces of the puzzle and she gathers confirmations and decides to break the silence.

Parallel to this plot, a second “novel” tells the true about Sarah, this young girl taken away during this awful night. In a heroic motion, she locked her younger brother in the secret closet of the flat and swore she would be back soon. The boy knew his sister never forgot her promises.

Tatiana de Rosnay wrote this novel in English, her native language. I remember, she said “I was unable to write in French like my other books. It was so difficult for me…”

She is perfectly bilingual, but you can feel when she writes in English that her style, her characters are more believable, exciting that when she writes in french. Some people claims (I read) that she uses clichés. Perhaps… I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t find that annoying and I’m just captivated, fascinated by the way she operates the theme of secrecy.

"Sarah’s key” is communally cited as an unforgettable novel. You can believe it! I've lent this book to my friends, to my doctor, to everyone and I haven't received any negative opinion. To tell it like it is, everybody admires the construction of the plot, the poignant scenes, the pace: fairly short passages: we go from second world war to now with subtle clues which help us to reconstruct the real story of Sarah.

A great great novel! One million copies sold, a movie soon and especially a message: don’t let time do its work, never forget!

Paris, July 1942

The girl was the first to hear the loud pounding on the door. Her room was closest to the entrance of the apartment. At first, dazed with sleep, she thought it was her father, coming up from his hiding place in the cellar. He’d forgotten his keys, and was impatient because nobody had heard his first, timid knock. But then came the voices, strong and brutal in the silent of the night. Nothing to do with her father. “Police! Open up! Now!”
The pounding took up again, louder. It echoed to the marrow of her bones. Her younger brother, asleep in the next bed, stirred. “Police! Open up! Open up!” What time was it? She peered through the curtains. It was still dark outside.
She was afraid. She remember the recent, hushed conversations she had overheard, late at night, when her parents thought she was asleep. She had crept up to the living room door and she had listened and watched from a little crack through the panel. Her father’s nervous voice . Her mother’s anxious face. They spoke their native tongue, which the girl understood, although she was not as fluent as them. Her father had whispered that times ahead would be difficult. That they would be to be brave and very careful. He pronounced strange, unknown words: “camps”, “roundup, a big roundup”, “early morning arrests”, and the girl wondered what all of it meant…

(Extract from: Tatiana de Rosnay, "Sarah's Key")

Raoul le renard

Raoul le renard, qui a accepté de poser pour la photo, a également accepté d’être le traducteur officiel de « Page 28 ». Je me suis dit que vous étiez sûrement curieux de connaître un peu plus ce sympathique canidé. J’ai donc demandé à sa mère adoptive de m’écrire quelques mots de sa biographie. Je transmets donc les informations recueillies.

"Raoul est un renard qui louche. Il est né en Allemagne mais il a vécu ses plus jeunes années dans une vitrine de mode en plein Manhattan. C'était une boutique de produits de luxe pour jeunes femmes branchées et fortunées. Il s'ennuyait un peu au milieu des ceintures Sonya Rykiel et des pulls Martine Sitbon. Les propriétaires de l'endroit étaient des français assez sympas mais très maniérés. Un jour, une jeune (enfin jeune… tout est relatif) dame est passée dans la boutique et l'a pris dans ses bras en le regardant avec amour et puis elle est partie. Elle est revenue le lendemain puis a à nouveau disparu pendant 4 jours. Un matin pluvieux et froid, elle est arrivée avec son ciré couvert de petites sirènes rouges aux gros seins acheté à Copenhague et l'a emmené prendre le métro puis une limousine pour l'aéroport JFK. Raoul s'est ainsi retrouvé a Paris, qui l’a immédiatement séduit, et puis à Turin. Aujourd’hui, il y habite mais il n'aime pas Turin. Ce qu'il aime, lui, c'est partir en vacances en Belgique où l'herbe est si verte. Il y a des jardins partout et un étang avec de gros poissons en Belgique. Raoul n'aime pas Turin, il aime le répéter. Surtout, il n’aime pas Berlusconi ; c’est plus fort que lui. Il déteste aussi la chasse. Il commence à se demander pourquoi son frère adoptif, kaikai kiki, un singe étrange à la tête couverte d’oreilles, hurle a longueur de journée et menace de le remplacer par un caniche. Il s'en fout un peu, Raoul. De toute façon, il n'aime pas l'Italie."

Firmin

Sam Savage, “Firmin”, Coffee House Press, 2006.

I should drink less coffee, I know that, because it drives me so crazy that I could turn over all my shelves just to chat with you about the books that I read. But I really need coffee, otherwise I would sleep all day long. I tried a few years ago to become the official Duracell mascot but they refused, claiming that I was far less famous than the white rabbit. So, I drink coffee. Especially on Tuesdays. Why Tuesday? Easy to understand: Tuesdays here are busy days.

So, last Tuesday in the late afternoon, I abandoned a thousand things I had to do and went to the supermarket. My six children are always hungry. Sometimes I think to myself: “I don't have children, I have stomachs on legs. I was in the only shopping street in my village, my offspring following behind. “Come on, kids, it’s gonna be too late for shopping!” We were walking and I decided not to have a look around the bookshop, after one of my daughter had reminded me “Mom, you bought so many books this month!”

Easier said than done! I can't resist. In this library, you can find books very unusual and, in our little “Nowhere” I use to be the only shopper.

So, I was not supposed to notice this book: my daughter was threatening me with her big round eyes , "Mom, we want to buy pie! " " Yes, ok, I'm coming."

I move forward. Sidelong look. A new book, encircled by a yellow strip: "If reading is your pleasure, this book was written for you. " This book is calling me. It’s a real provocation!

Another step, backward. The title: "Firmin". The cover: an ugly sad rat, sitting on a mountain of books. The author: Sam Savage. "I don’t know him ..." “Mom, let’s go!” “Yes, I'm coming…”

An hesitation: "And if ever this book ..." In front of me, the children, impatient. Behind the window, the bookseller. "Hi! " he says shaking his hand. Suddenly, I am sure: there is no coincidence, only meetings, happy or unhappy. I just met a book. I want to know it.

Two hours later I had finished. Do you want me to tell you?

Boston in the Sixties. The cellar of a library as you have never seen it, full of treasures and rare books. Twelve rats born there. The mother is an alcoholic, fat and nasty. Firmin, the smallest, can never eat. It is obliged to chew paper. No other possibility to stay alive: swallowing words, pages, whole chapters. Everything is good enough to satisfy hunger: philosophy, astronomy, geography, the Bible, the Koran ...

One day, he realizes he can read, so he consumes less and less pages, only eating margins. Doctors are unanimous about him: this is a case of banal books bulimia.

Our friendly rat grows up in the recesses of the library, reading and reading the classics authors. He remains there when the whole family goes away, having no company except the old bookseller. Obviously, Firmin is a rat, an awful creature and he’s obliged to hide but when he dreams, this man becomes his best friend. Sometimes he thinks he is the hero of a novel, a movie star: Joyce, Faulkner and why not? Fred Aster.

But life is not a dream and Firmin will never be a movie star. The only wealth is the freedom he could have… But a rat is not able to speak, laugh or cry. He cannot communicate with humans. He cannot clap when he’s happy and rats have no heart. Nevertheless, his heart is worthy of a character in Flaubert.


You can see if you read this book, “Firmin” is not just the autobiography of a book-eating rat.

It is also the story of a quest: recognition, freedom, communication and sharing. Behind the adventures of a gifted rat, you can see effortlessly a beautiful metaphor: “Firmin”, it’s a life filled with dreams and illusions. And, shutting the book, I’m sure you’ll remember this sentence “If you are alone, I think it can help you if you are a little bit crazy.”


Extract

I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov’s ‘Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins’; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping likeTolstoy’s ‘All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ People remember those words even when they have forgotten everything else about the books. When it comes to openers, though, the best in my view has to be the beginning of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: ‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard.’ I’ve read that one dozens of times and it still knocks my socks off. Ford Madox Ford was a Big One.

In all my life struggling to write I have struggled with nothing so manfully – yes, that’s the word, manfully – as with openers. It has always seemed to me that if I could just get that bit right all the rest would follow automatically. I thought of that first sentence as a kind of semantic womb stuffed with the busy embryos of unwritten pages, brilliant little nuggets of genius practically panting to be born. From that grand vessel the entire story would, so to speak, ooze forth. What a delusion! Exactly the opposite was true. And it is not as if there weren’t any good ones. Savor this, for example: ‘When the phone rang at 3:00 a.m. Morris Monk knew even before picking up the receiver that the call was from a dame, and he knew something else too: dames meant trouble.’ Or this: ‘Just before being hacked to pieces by Gamel’s sadistic soldiers, Colonel Benchley had a vision of the little whitewashed cottage in Shropshire, and Mrs Benchley in the doorway, and the children.’ Or this: ‘Paris, London, Djibouti, all seemed unreal to him now as he sat amid the ruins of yet another Thanksgiving dinner with his mother and father and that idiot Charles.’ Who can remain unimpressed by sentences like these? They are so pregnant
with meaning, so, I dare say, poignant with it that they positively bulge with whole unwritten chapters – unwritten, but there, already there!

Alas, in reality they were nothing but bubbles, illusions every one. Each of the wonderful phrases, so full of promise, was like a gift-wrapped box clutched in a small child’s eager hand, a box that holds nothing but gravel and bits of trash, though it rattles oh so enticingly. He thinks it is candy! I thought it was literature. All those sentences – and many, many others as well – proved to be not springboards to the great unwritten novel but insurmountable barriers to it. You
see, they were too good. I could never live up to them. Some writers can never equal their first novel. I could never equal my first sentence. And look at me now. Look how I have begun this, my final work, my opus: ‘I had always imagined that my life story, if and when . . .’ Good God, ‘if and when’! You see the problem. Hopeless. Scratch it.

(Extract from Sam Savage, « Firmin »)

Leaving the world

Douglas KENNEDY, "LEAVING THE WORLD"

Another post about Douglas Kennedy? OK, I’ll do it short and simple because while we are reading that he is the most French among American authors, that he persists in writing 1000 words a day, that the Americans shun his novels (the Europeans know why…), that he is a wonderful storyteller, it would be a waste of time not to read it. And it would be such a pity to ignore this writer.


When you open a book signed “Douglas Kennedy”, you know that you’re going to leave for a long long travel. Pages will become months or years. If you read a book by Douglas Kennedy, you’ll agree to take part in an odyssey, a human and geographical odyssey. What’s a " human odyssey "? I don’t know but I have no other word to speak about his stories. Douglas Kennedy has no need to be related. Just read it. You will find great delight in reading him!


Odyssey, I said, because you travel across the United States, then you go to Canada or in Berlin and its intellectual districts, always discovering a part of the culture. Kennedy does not only indicate that people are different according to the place, he points and goes as far as denouncing facts (to find faults with the American system, it seems sometimes to be his hobby, - which sometimes appears to be one of his pet subjects).


Odyssey… because you meet happiness, and happiness is always so fragile, and tragedies, always very disastrous but that's right: Douglas Kennedy, it is dramas and misfortune on every page but told there brilliantly (in such a brilliant way!) and after such a book, we always have to take a second look at our own life.


But I think you understood: I am a fan, a real groupie. I have all his books and all i need now is the T-shirt " I love Douglas Kennedy! " Then to be objective with him, I can’t " Why, mom, do you always say ‘yeaaaaahhhh!!!!’ when you see Douglas on television?”, asks my 8 years old daughter. Good question: why?
Do you think we always need a good reason to love? Of course not and nevertheless, reasons, I have thousands.


Because of his style? Yes, it’s great but never written pompously.

Because he often hits the bull’s-eye? Yes, when he paints the psychology of his characters even better than the settings in which they live.

Because he is cultivated? Sure!

Because his plots are so elaborated they make us go " waw! "? Exact!

Because he might be the only man in the world able to speak about maternity like that? Yes, he made me cry…

Because when we are in the heart of his "tragedies", we shiver? Yes but this passage especially, I cannot speak about it.

Because having read one of his books, we always consider the possibility of stopping cigarettes? I admit: yes (there’s always one of the characters who smokes like a chimney and who catches a cancer)

Because he ‘rocks’ some truths right in the face? Slaps sometimes (but I shall not say more about it.)
Yes why this book in particular? Tricky question: I don’t want to reveal anything.


Well, in a few words: the story takes place in the university circles in the USA, then in a library in Canada. The heroine, Jane, shares with us during almost all the book her passion for famous Anglo-Saxon authors, with, it seems, a preference for Emily Dickinson and Samuel Beckett, repeating this sentence “L’Innomable” : “It is necessary to continue, I cannot continue, I am going to continue.” To continue thus, it is the watchword of this novel where, nevertheless, everything compels to give up. To have an idea of the plot, you should have a look at the summary, but certainly not thinking that all the story is told. It’s signed “Douglas Kennedy”, don’t forget and let yourself be caught in it.

Summary

On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents – she would never get married and she would never have children. But life, as Jane comes to discover, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then Jane falls pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise – but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world.Just when she has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for some sort of personal redemption. Convinced that she knows more about the case than the police do, she is forced to make a decision – stay hidden or bring to light a shattering truth…