...
The book follows the lives of a range of characters - centered on Charlotte Gray.
Charlotte - a young Scottish woman trying to do her bit for the war effort. Posessed of excellent French language skills, she ends up working for some covert government outfit. She falls in love with an ... Read review
Sebastian Faulks established his authority as a storyteller with his best-selling ... more
Birdsong. His next book, Charlotte Gray, a haunting story of love and war set in London and occupied France in 1942-3, is loosely a sequel. Charlotte is a highly educ...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Sebastian Faulks established his authority as a storyteller with his best-selling ... more
Birdsong. His next book, Charlotte Gray, a haunting story of love and war set in London and occupied France in 1942-3, is loosely a sequel. Charlotte is a highly educ...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Sebastian Faulks established his authority as a storyteller with his best-selling ... more
Birdsong. His next book,Charlotte Gray, a haunting story of love and war set in London and occupied France in 1942-3, is loosely a sequel. Charlotte is a highly educa...
Postage & Packaging: £2.75 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Sebastian Faulks established his authority as a storyteller with his best-selling ... more
Birdsong. His next book, Charlotte Gray, a haunting story of love and war set in London and occupied France in 1942-3, is loosely a sequel. Charlotte is a highly educated young Scottish woman who falls passionately in love with an airman, Peter Gregory, emotionally scarred by his many close brushes with death. When he disappears on a mission to France, she follows him as a British secret courier, sent over to help support the Resistance. Having failed to find Gregory, she decides to stay on to do what she can for the France she has loved since childhood. She and the reader are drawn ever deeper into the lives of assimilated French Jews-- the children Andre and Jacob whose parents have already been sent to the death camps, and the Levades, father and son. Though ultimately powerless to help, Charlotte nevertheless learns a far deeper understanding of herself and her own family through them. This is a book full of insight into the way civilization can slip into barbarism. Its haunting themes of memory and passion stay with you long after you have finished reading. --Lisa Jardine
Postage & Packaging:refer to website Availability:Check Site.
Advantages: very well written Disadvantages: not what you might expect.
...of characters - centered on Charlotte Gray.
Charlotte - a young Scottish woman trying to do her bit for the war effort. Posessed of excellent French language skills, she ends up working for some covert government outfit. She falls in love with an airman. Charlotte goes to France to carry messages, but stays to suport the resistence and the friends she has made there. She is also looking for her lost airman.
Peter Gregory ... ...something of a death wish, and as a reader you never really get close to him, although for Charlotte's sake you have to worry about his fate.
Julien Levade - part Jewish son of a painter, he's a member of the french resistence and a really likeable character. He strives to do the right thing and has a real passion for life.
Andre and Jacob - two young Jewsih boys who's parents are sent to camps at the begninning of the ... more
I was expecting this to be an intelligently written second world war thriller. I was surprised by the degree to which this is not in fact a thriller novel. It is however, brilliantly devised and written and very much about the second world war.
The setting is largely France, dealing with French responses to the occupation - unlike the image created by 'allo allo', most people were not in the resistence, many collaborated, including the then Vichy government. In war time, people often do terrible things, and this book does not shy away from exploring the inhumanity that war encourages.
The book follows the lives of a range of characters - centered on Charlotte Gray.
Charlotte - a young Scottish woman trying to do her bit for the war effort. Posessed of excellent French language skills, she ends up working for some covert government outfit. She falls in love with an airman. Charlotte goes to France to carry messages, but stays to suport the resistence and the friends she has made there. She is also looking for her lost airman.
Peter Gregory - airman and Charlotte's lover. He's a grim man with something of a death wish, and as a reader you never really get close to him, although for Charlotte's sake you have to worry about his fate.
Julien Levade - part Jewish son of a painter, he's a member of the french resistence and a really likeable character. He strives to do the right thing and has a real passion for life.
Andre and Jacob - two young Jewsih boys who's parents are sent to camps at the begninning of the book. Some of the local people hide them, but others are keen to expose them for their own ends. These children are innocent pawns in a terrible game and are the main method through which the darker side of occupied France is explored.
There are two features which, for me, made this book utterly compelling. Firstly, it emphasises the ordinariness of the people caught up in the war- they weren't supermen and superwomen, their motives would have been complex and odd, they would have made mistakes. Secondly, I like the way in which Faulks resists conventional notions of plot - the high octaine drama littered with vital coincidences and crossed paths does not happen. It is an extraordinary tale of ordinary people, and that makes this book very powerful reading indeed.
Advantages: Excellent sister book to Birdsong Disadvantages: A little slow starting
...during the war years.
Charlotte Gray is sent to Occupied France to run an errand for an undercover special operations unit. However she has a mission of her own - to find her lover, and airman lost in action over France.
She stays in France, against her orders, and settles in the small town of Lauverette whilst she tries to find information about her lover. Hiding her identity from the townspeople she suffers, along with them, at the hands of the ... ...artist, Levade, whose son runs the local resistance unit.
Meanwhile her lover, Peter Gregory, injured and alone, is attempting to find a way back across the channel impeded by his tenuous grasp of the French language but aided by french people supporting the Allied effort.
As the war progresses, things in Lauverette become worse neighbours decry their neighbours to the German authorities as pressure is put on by local commanders to fill the quotas ...
indychick_uk 07.03.2001
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
Advantages: Opens the mind. Disadvantages: Very Long
Sebastian Faulks writes fiction novels that are set during world wars one and two. They are usually based on the experiance of a soldier and there is an element of romance. In charlote Gray and also Birdsong, Faulks seems to reach out and take you into the war years themselves.
He has a knack of re-creating the atmosphere of small french towns and villages, and I some what expect that he has spent many years living and working in France to be able ... ...Charlote Gray, Faulks plots the life of a young scottish woman who falls in love with a pilot. She joins the british secret service with the aim of being dropped into France. Of course when her love is then pronounced as missing in action in France, she sees it as the chance to search him out again.. I will not spoil the book any further, but if you like books on the wars, france, romance or action then any of Faulks's books are for you. ...
Malmsteen 13.09.2000
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
Would you read it again?
Story
Characters
How does it compare to ...
Quick review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
I enjoyed the Sebastian Faulks novel probably more than any of his other work. Birdsong was magnificent and grossly violent with the First World War, and al it's human trappings. But Charlote Gray, wrapped me up in a world of SF's creation. Totally different from the film, the book should be remade as a film because the original film, totally lost the plot. Back to the book, you never really got to know Peter, although the book revolves about him, similar attributes to people and loved one's you meet in life, do you really know them? Her powerful belief in this man, pulls her through the horrors of a world gone mad, a briliant book, a must read. Great stuff Sebastian.
Jim Watters ...
Gormenghast 24.08.2007
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
Advantages: Interestng historical parts Disadvantages: Bit too romantic and slow early on
...see where or how exactly Charlotte does fall in love with Peter Gregory. The parts in France are by far the highlights of the book, with some really emotional scenes. The segments involving the Holocaust are informative but don’t go in to too much gory detail, which doesn’t make it a very depressing story. Overall, the book is enjoyable to read and contains some great characters but also some weak ones. ...
schizochico 04.09.2000
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
Advantages: Characterisation & many more Disadvantages: very few. not quite as good as Birdsong
After finishing 'Birdsong' I wanted to read Faulks' other books becuase I was so impressed by his writing style. 'Charlotte Gray' did not disappoint. The characterisation of the main character as well as her love interests is brilliant. Throughout the book you find yourself hoping for her success and happiness. Faulks evokes sadness and despair in the reader and I found one part of the book desperately harrowing. I will not say which becuase it would ...
eleanor73 12.01.2001
· Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks
Would you read it again?
Story
Characters
How does it compare to ...
Similar reviews »
Reviews which might be of interest for "Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks"
Advantages: Gripping plot, interesting period of history (to me) Disadvantages: Poor characterisation, repetitive writing, assumes in depth knowledge of period
most history lessons focus on World War Two than the Spanish Civil War and, as a result, the author frequently attributes his readership with perhaps a greater knowledge of the period than should be expected. The various references to the political system, the key players, the blockade of Spain by the British and other events would be better explained to make the book more enjoyable to the average reader.
I bought the book because of the suggestion on the cover that if you liked Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Shadow of the Wind) or SebastianFaulks (I imagine that ?Birdsong? and ?CharlotteGray? were in mind), then you would enjoy ?Winter In Madrid?. I did enjoy Shadow of the Wind and I am a big fan of SebastianFaulks, and I did enjoy ?Winter In Madrid?. However, this novel comes nowhere near the works of Zafon or Faulks in terms of writing ...
Advantages: Faulks'genius Disadvantages: Without the setting of war, is not as provoking as Birdsong or Charlotte Gray
The Girl at the Lion d'Or is a short, but explosive, moving tale of love, conscience and tragedy, which, although not as harrowing and thought-provoking as Birdsong or CharlotteGray, is another excellent novel by bestselling author SebastianFaulks.
It tells the story of a young woman, with a secret past, who arrives to work at the dingy Hotel du Lion d'Or in a small town in inter-war France. She soon embarks on a passionate love affair with a local married man, and the events of her childhood that planted the seeds of her character slowly reveal themselves.
Faulks uses vivid imagery to create the atmosphere of the setting, and as usual his characters are deep and undergo a process of self-discovery as the novel unfolds. An excellent read - highly recommended! ...
Advantages: Well written, good characters Disadvantages: Dark storyline, not to everyone's tastes
SebastianFaulks is a well regarded writer with many fine books on his CV including Birdsong (1993) CharlotteGray (1998) and On Green Dolphin Street (2001). He seems to be always looking for new challenges in his writing and recently in 2008 he became the latest author to write an official James Bond novel ?Devil May Care?, at the request of the trustees of the estate of Ian Fleming. Engelby written before the Bond novel in 2007 once again proves his versatility as a writer.
In ?Engleby? SebastianFaulks skilfully introduces us to the life of Mike Engleby. His story is gradually revealed and the reader gets drawn in to a disturbing world of obsession and cruelty. Engleby is a poor working class boy growing up in a dysfunctional family in the 50?s. Because of his academic ability he gains a scholarship to public school and later a place ...
In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, heads for Occupied France on a dual mission - officially, to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and unofficially, to search for her lover, an English airman missing in action.
Compare Charlotte Gray - Sebastian Faulks to other similar Historical Fiction Books »
