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Charlotte Gray | 
 enlarge | Author: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
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You Save: £7.98 (100%)
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Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 2101
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0099394316
EAN: 9780099394310
ASIN: 0099394316
Publication Date: July 1, 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 64 more reviews...
 A moving book set in wartime France July 5, 2008
John Holland (Surrey, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 captured in text that fully portrays the grim reality. Focussing on two Jewish children brings home the awful consequences of genocide, and regularly brought tears to my eyes. The descriptions were so real that I could see my own children following those footsteps.
Maybe my slight criticism is that Charlotte's story and the Jewish stories don't seem to stick together. There is too much comment on French wartime behaviour for the novel to completely gel. But still a fine and moving read.
 A moving journey May 27, 2008
L. H. Healy (Hertfordshire, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 of the people, her mission takes on a much broader purpose as she seeks to mend or at least temporarily 'patch-up' the heartaches in the lives of some of those she encounters.
It is beautifully written, with wonderful characters like the old man Charlotte looks after for a time in France, Levade, and his son Julien who is bravely battling in one of the Resistance movements, and with whom Charlotte finds a true and enduring friendship unlike anything in her past. Through the novel we learn of the events over in France during these 'dark' times, and to discover more about the ways of their then leaders and their complicity with the Germans in rounding up Jews is startling. It is extremely moving and disquieting to read the passages about first Levade, and then the children, as they meet their horrific and appalling fates. Faulkes is a masterly storyteller, and succeeds here in crafting an enthralling, moving novel which I could not put down for long, and which I would like to read again one day.
Never Forget! March 2, 2008
Mrs. C. Calisgil (Turkey)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This, again, was a second reading and well worth it. Had I not read it directly after revisiting 'Birdsong', I would probably have rated it 5 stars. Birdsong, however, is one of the best novels I've ever read, and although CG is very good, it does pale a little by comparison. Charlotte Gray is the daughter of Colonel Gray, Stephen Wraysford's superior officer in Birdsong and this is the main connection between the two novels. Other reviewers here have already given very worthy comment on this novel, but I would like to add that the overwhelming feeling it left me with was that we must never forget what man did to fellow man - the fact that human beings are capable of such evil. I would thoroughly recommend this book - it's a harrowing, but gripping tale of wartime France and serves as a very real reminder.
 A so-so tale of life, love and hardships in the second world war February 2, 2008
Ingaborga (London, UK)
Charlotte Gray, the eponymous heroine of Sebastian Faulks's novel about the second world war, is a young, beautiful and slightly naive Scottish girl, who travels to London to do her bit for the war effort. The opening chapters of the book see her meet two men who change the course of her life - Dick Cannerley, who finds her a job carrying out secret missions for the government, and Peter Gregory, an RAF airman with whom Charlotte falls in love. When Gregory goes missing after a routine flight to France, Charlotte feels she has no choice but to follow him. Falling in with members of the resistence in the small town of Lavaurette, Charlotte's life comes into sharp contact with the dark realities of life in occupied France.
I found Charlotte Gray an oddly disjointed novel in many ways. Scenes of action and adventure are intersposed with long, somewhat tedious descriptive passages. References to Proust sit uneasily alongside tales of wartime derring-do. An implausible, frankly irritating sub-plot about a childhood encounter with her father bubbles along in the background before reaching an all to easy resolution in the closing pages of the book. Overall, I found the novel to be unbalanced, skimming my way through endless paragraphs of tiresome text before slowing down to enjoy some rather fine story telling. The characterisation was patchy too. Some - Charlotte, Monsieur Levade, the little Duguay boys - were painted with great care and attention, taking vivid and realistic form as the story progressed. Others were sketched as mere outlines, fading to a dim memory almost before their part in the story had even passed. The final chapters, after Charlotte returns to England, tie up all the loose ends with surprising ease, refusing the reader the satisfaction that comes from a hard earned happy ending.
I gave this three stars because, to misquote the old adage, when it was good, it was very very good. But when it was bad it was - mediocre.
A good read, but... April 1, 2007
maria1971
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
You can only go so wrong with Sebastian Faulks, as his books are always beautifully written, touching, intense and melancholy.
However, this one was just a little too epic for me i.e. it could have done with being a little bit shorter and a little less convoluted.
Maybe to some extent it was the setting (World War 2, Occupied France) that didn't do it for me, but I didn't really lose myself in, or find it impossible to tear myself away from, this novel as I had with some of Faulks' other work.
If you've read his other work, by all means do read this too, but if you're looking for an introduction to Faulks, I'd go with `Birdsong' or `On Green Dolphin Street' first.
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