CLEO The Cat Who Mended a Family by Helen Brown

Cleo is not the book I wanted to read when I bought it. The book I wanted wasn’t available at the store I was in, and the cover of this one caught my eye. I am a cat person. (I’m a dog person, too, although I don’t have one at the present time.) I wasn’t sold by the cover; it looks like a children’s book. But it says it’s an international bestseller, and was hailed by Good Housekeeping as “the next Marley & Me,” which I did not read (I read The Art of Racing in the Rain, instead, and would give it five bookmarks). However, I did see the movie, Marley & Me, and liked it, although not as much as the true story of Hachi, which I think will stay with me the rest of my life. As I reached about the middle of this book, I decided the “international” in “bestseller” must have been New Zealand and Australia, where the author once lived / now lives. 


I hate saying that I didn’t like a book. I know the blood, sweat and tears that go into writing one, and it seems traitorous, therefore, I will only say I didn’t care much for the first half of this one. I think it’s a memoir, and the plot is very thin: a young family suffers a terrible loss, and then gets stuck with a kitten they are not in any emotional condition to adopt. From there, they must figure out how to keep going on with their lives. And of course, their loss is terrible, but I wasn’t drawn in by it. It’s the initiating hook of the story, so maybe there was too little time for me to be emotionally involved enough to share their pain. I wish the author had taken the time to make me care. I was left feeling like a casual observer, and in fact, I didn’t see that some of the characters themselves were all that devastated.

There is practically no conflict in this story at all, and that may be one reason I didn’t care about it. Everything fell easily into place for Helen. When a job offer came from the blue and required the family to uproot and move, no problem. When they had to leave their friends, no problem. At the new job, the protag liked everyone, and everyone liked her. Even the new job was a dream. When the couple divorced, no problem. Give their dog away? Leave Cleo behind for a year? No problem. And on and on the same way through the whole book. Obstacles to happiness keep cropping up, but are brushed aside as easily and automatically as shooing a fly. It would have been much more interesting had there been something she had to fight for or against. I needed a reason to root for her. The closest thing to an antagonist in the story was her mother, who only appears briefly in two scenes. At least she made me want to slap her.

The story does pick up midway through, after Helen meets Philip. At least he is an interesting character who eventually experiences some emotional conflict. I think had he not come along at that point, I would have just put the book down and read something else. However, by the end, when Helen wraps everything up, I had come to care enough about the characters to shed some tears and felt the author redeemed herself and the story. 3 bookmarks

For an explanation of my bookmark system, click on this link.
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Before posting this review, I read those on Amazon. They were all good 4 and 5 star reviews.

 

SARAH'S KEY by Tatiana de Rosnay

This book has a gorgeous cover.

Holocaust stories are always horrifying and heartbreaking, and Sarah’s Key by French author Tatiana De Rosnay is no exception.

Julia Jarmond is an American-born journalist married to a Frenchman, who lives in Paris. She has an eleven-year old daughter. She writes for a magazine geared toward other Americans living in France. The 60th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ is coming up soon, and Julia’s assignment is to write about it. The Vel’ d’Hiv’ was the day in July of 1942 when French police rounded up Jewish families at dawn, including more than 4,000 children, and took them to an indoor stadium to be held until they were sent to Auschwitz. They were there for days with no food or water, and no bathrooms. 

Many died.  
They were the lucky ones. This book does not spare us the horrendous events or conditions the Jewish people suffered in the camps…and they were unspeakable nightmares.

Julia’s husband is renovating an apartment that had belonged to his grandparents, more specifically, his grandmere, when the story begins. When the apartment is completed, he and Julia, and their daughter, will move in. It is located on Rue de Saintonge, in the heart of the area where the Vel’d’Hiv’ roundup took place. Soon Julia becomes curious and begins researching who had lived in the apartment during that time.

Sarah Starzynski was ten-years-old on that fateful morning and her little brother was four. She adored him. She doted on him. They played together all the time, and had a secret hiding place. So when the French police came to get them that morning, Sarah locked her little brother in the secret place, promising to come back for him in a few hours. She had no idea what her future held.

This is a powerful story, masterfully told. It’s swift reading, too. I finished it in a few hours. And then I read the author’s acknowledgments, her interview, the historical perspective, the recommended reading list, the reading group questions, and finally, the back cover again, because I didn’t want it to end. 

5 Bookmarks (For an explanation of my bookmark system, click here.)