Just finished Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay in one 5-hour sitting… from beginning to end.  It was really powerful and a fast read.  The book switches between 1942 and 2002.  In 1942, a ten year old girl locks her brother in a cupboard in hopes of protecting him from the French police arresting Jewish families.  In 2002, an American journalist in Paris seeks out the details of that very arrest– the curious incident of “Vel d’Hiv,” an event where French police committed brutality to Jewish victims, rather than German Nazis.

I was really interested in this historic setting.  Vel d’Hiv refers to an indoor stadium used for bicycle races and other large scale activities.  This was where the French police wrenched over thirteen thousand Jewish people from their beds on July 16 and 17, 1942.  Conditions inside the stadium were horrendous.  Ultimately, everyone in the stadium was sent to their death at concentration camps/extermination camps.  This roundup by French police was committed under orders of the German Gestapo, so it was a surprise to many Jews when French police showed up at their door.  They did not expect the brutality that was to follow.  Ultimately, though, it was hidden from history books and never revealed to generations of French citizens to come.  Everything was done under wraps and the French government even refused to apologize for decades.

Overall, the story is a difficult one and the book is very well written.  I guess what disappointed me was that the second half loses focus on the Holocaust, and starts highlighting the American journalist’s life.  Though the whole book still revolves around the little girl in 1942, this story seems to fade away behind the complex family life of our 21st century protagonist.  That kind of annoyed me.  Regardless, I was glued to my seat and could not put the book down.  There is an important theme of the guilt buried in understanding our past, and the importance of facing the past to accept that guilt.  Perhaps the author is trying to reflect a lesson to the larger nation of France (and any nation, any group of people with a history– I`m looking at you Japan).

I wasn’t moved to tears as much as I felt like I should have.  I think this is because the modern story just wasn’t as engrossing as the one from 1942.  Despite this, Sarah’s Key is a unique book.  Thanks to de Rosnay for bringing  an important, but hidden, historic event to our attention.  I recommend this book highly.

Last night I “finished” Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.  He remains a wonderful writer, however I definitely prefer his novels.  The reason “finished” is in quotations is because I became pretty fed up with some of the chapters and ended up skimming some 50 pages of it (a lot of it just repeated similar gruesome stories, and it just wasn’t really moving me towards any direction but annoyance).  This is not to say that I am annoyed at the issues or any of the things he presented… it just became repetitive. So I skipped to the last section (all 23 pages of it), which was a lot more story-telling and narrative… which I liked.  And actually, I didn’t really understand his position until these last 23 pages so it was a good section to read.

I don’t want to stop eating meat, I just wish I could do it without feeling guilty about where my meat came from.  My favorite part of the book was about Frank Reese who raises turkey the natural way (they are known as “heritage turkeys.”)  He lets them run around and he is really attached to his turkeys.  I really thought hard about this quote:  ”If I had to choose between knowing that my throat was going to be slit at the end, which might last three minutes, but I’ve had to live for six weeks in pain, I’d probably ask for that slit throat six weeks earlier.  People only see the killing… ”  I just don’t know how efficient it would be to get meat from poultry farmers like Reese– there are hardly enough heritage turkeys out there to serve Staten Island!  He needs more feed, he needs more space, and he needs more time than factory farms.  But his turkeys don’t suffer and they are healthy– and they are probably more delicious and healthy for us.  I wish we could all resort back to his methods of farming so that we can get our meat and stay ethical too… I guess if more poultry farmers did it, we would be in a better place.  So then we have to reduce the total meat intake so that poultry farmers can feed us at all  using these methods.  And the only way for that to happen is if we eat less meat.  How will that happen?  And how contradictory is it to boycott the very product Reese is trying to sell?

I am definitely not an animal rights-type person.  But I think the meat industry and factory farming contributes a LOT to global problems.  That is what I appreciated about this book:  it doesn’t focus only on animal rights or cruelty (though there is still a lot of it).  Whether or not you become vegetarian/vegan you should still be aware of the treatment of animals and the consequences such treatment can have on ourselves (the consumers) and the environment.  It is hard to know what is the most efficient way to make a dent in the industry so that factory farming can stop. Do our food choices really help? Or should we target the issues some other way?  Foer puts it best here:

I’ve restricted myself to mostly discussing how our food choices affect the ecology of our planet and the lives of its animals, but I could have just as easily made the entire book about public health, workers’ rights, decaying rural communities, or global poverty– all of which are profoundly affected by factory farming.  Factory farming of course, does not cause all the world’s problems but it is remarkable just how many of them intersect there.  And it is equally remarkable and completely improbable, that the likes of you and me would have real influence over factory farming.  But no one can seriously doubt the influence of US consumers on global farm practices.

I wouldn’t say I recommend the book with any level of enthusiasm… but I learned a lot and found it incredibly interesting in style.  We do need to be more conscious about our food choices and what the impact our choices can have on the rest of the world.  Foer doesn’t tell you to be vegetarian or vegan, he just asks you to think before you buy (or bite).

On a less serious note, one thing came to my mind as I was reading the book.  One of Foer’s many graphic imageries features a slaughterhouse where a pig’s guts are lying on the table.  Foer couldn’t believe that all of the pig’s innards were being tossed into a garbage bag.  I couldn’t help but think, “Man, Chinese people could have had a feast…pig’s blood, liver, heart…”

SORRY that was gross…!  I really  couldn’t help it!