itibaren Gho, Punjab, Hindistan
Very moving. I like this book because it makes you feel emotions: sympathy, sorrow, anger, disgust, anticipation, etc. It was a little hard to get into at first because of the intertwining stories: Sarah's in 1942 and Julia's in present day. The chapters are extra short (usually about 2-3 pages), so that made it even harder to invest in either character at the beginning. I also would liked to have seen Sarah's story told in 1st person. She's not even referred to by name until the end of her portion of the novel...just "the girl." I'm sure the author had a specific purpose for that. Maybe the reader was supposed to find out about her sad tale just as Julia did, through accounts. But by page 100, it really got moving. This is also about the time in the novel that it is told entirely from Julia's point of view. I learned something about the Holocaust that I didn't know. I wasn't aware that so many Jews were deported from France. I really don't find it shocking that the French suppressed their involvement for so many years. This was a good book. It might help to have a background in the Holocaust and Vichy France prior to reading it.
No one is too old to read Mary Poppins. Do please forget the movie. Poppins is the stuff of nightmares, and rightly so! A witch for our times.