Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780099394310
Edition: New edition
ISBN: 0099394316
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: July 01, 1999
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage

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Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
Sebastian Faulks established his authority as a storyteller with his best-selling 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 civilisation can slip into barbarism. Its haunting themes of memory and passion stay with you long after you have finished reading. --Lisa Jardine




Rating: - Left me curiously unmoved...
I had high hopes for this book, because I absolutely loved Birdsong, but I found it left me rather unmoved. It's written in what seems, to me at least, to be a curiously detached style and it didn't seem to really penetrate beneath the surface of the characters. Even amidst the danger of Occupied France, SS officers on trains, children being sent to concentration camps, the collaboration and resistance of the French, I never really cared very much about what happened to the characters. The one part ... Read More

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Rating: - Best book about WWII I have read
This is a terrific book - difficult to put down and a real literary achievement. It is fundamentally a romance set against a backdrop of war but is much more than that in reality.
Not an easy read in terms of its subject matter as it deals with the worst aspects of Nazi atrocities as well as the bravery, clever scheming and misguided realpolitick of the Allies.
Those in France involved with resisting the Reich are not forgotten, as are those who embraced the regime brought by their occupiers. ... Read More

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Rating: - Still haunts me on the second reading
I read first read this book in my late teens and it haunted me then and brought with it a greater appreciation for literature that has stayed with me ever since. I decided to re-read Charlotte Gray now in my mid twenties and wasn't sure about how I would feel upon re-reading it.
Happily, I was swept away again. Charlotte is a very likeable character and Faulks manages to evoke romance and passion without any sense of sentimentality. I loved the characters of Levade and Julien and felt that they bring ... Read More

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Rating: - A moving book set in wartime France
Charlotte is a British spy sent into France in 1942, trained by the government to liaise with the resistance and pass messages. Secretly she is hoping to make contact with her lover, who has gone missing during a routine flight to France. She uses the resistance to try to establish his location and make contact.
This love story is contrasted with the backdrop of war - the brutal treatment of Jews by the Vichy government and many of the French characters. The destruction of property and human life is ... Read More

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Rating: - A moving journey
Having recently read and admired 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks, I was keen to read Charlotte Gray. I loved it.
What a fascinating, at times terrifying journey she undertakes! We follow her journey from Scotland as she heads south to London to do her bit for the war effort, meeting various people who each alter the course of her life, and one of whom she falls in love with, and it becomes her destiny to follow him to France. But on arriving in France and uncovering the truth of the situation there for some ... Read More

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