I read and really enjoyed other books by Tatiana de Rosnay (A Secret Kept and Sarah's Key), so I have had this sitting in my pile of books waiting to be read. I finally got to it.
And it is as tragic as you'd expect if you read Sarah's Key. It starts out feeling like a book about saving a house that was a home to a family for generations, where a woman was welcomed in and finally part of a loving family, where life is lived and loss is mourned. And it is that.
But it is also a book about love. Real and deep love. And painful secrets kept to protect loved ones. While hiding in the cellar of her husband's family home in 1860's Paris Rose is writing to her husband, who happens to have died 10 years prior. She is catching him up on what has happened since he left her. Their home is about to be torn down in the redesigning of the city. She tells him of the people she has bonded with and how it helped save her life when she was forced to live without him. And she hints at something painful she needs to share with him.
As her writing unfold we learn all about Rose and eventually her painful secret is told as time marches towards the destruction of her house.
(Finished June 30, 2015)
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