A Secret Kept

Tatiana de Rosnay's newest work, A Secret Kept, vividly depicts a Parisian son's search to discover the truth behind his mother's sudden death which occurred over 30 years ago. De Rosnay examines a family's deepest secrets of love and betrayal. Themes of death and attraction are intricately connected to each other and abound within de Rosnay's work.

A Secret Kept is very emotional. It is not so much an emotional experience for the reader. Instead, the content and descriptions within de Rosnay's work are laced with deep emotional overtones and significance for the characters within her story. Illustrations of desire, passion, raw sexuality, guilt, grief, and hatred bounce off of the many pages of this novel. It is a dark tale and one not to be taken lightly.

De Rosnay frequently mentions within her work that children in the twenty-first century are not connected to their parents, or family in general. She depicts the children of the protagonist, Antoine Rey, as existing in a world isolated from human contact and yet surrounded by technology. Text messages, computers, televisions, and Ipods are described as the modern child's tools of isolation.

At a first glance, it seems de Rosnay suggests that children's isolation from their families is a new occurrence in the modern world. However, de Rosnay's story is not so narrow. De Rosnay portrays Antoine and his sister, Melanie, as children who were extremely isolated from their parents during the 1970s. It seems not so much has changed throughout the years, after all, there are just new means to achieving the same results.

Overall, I enjoyed A Secret Kept. Yes, it is dark, jam-packed full of death and destruction, and a tad bit depressing... but it also contains an alluring plot line, twists, and a sound ending.