Rating: 
Summary: Not bad -- although Charlotte was less than convincing!
Review: Faulks writes of this young lady Charlotte who is taken to France on a mission that is not altogether true and stays longer than intended. Prior to this she falls hopelessly (and somewhat unconvincingly) in love with the pilot Peter Gregory.Throughout her stay at the Domaine, her focus remains on the lost love of Gregory and not perhaps on the WWII which she is surrounded by. I found that Charlotte's story didn't ring true for the short time that she knew her love. The book was particularly long and fluffy and perhaps would have achieved the same end if a lot of it was cut out. Perhaps then I would have given it 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Could not put it down!
Review: This one was my personal favorite of the trilogy. Eventhough I felt little connection with Charlotte, her perils kept me reading. The subplot of Andre, Jacob and Levade certainly stole the show. Faulks seems always to beautifully represent unjust and tragic contrasts of society during war. The historical detail is rich and convincing. I wish he would now write from a Jewish perspective.
Rating:
Summary: Sebastian goes schizophrenic- again.
Review: The heroine is soggy bog wet, the writing around her turgid and pointless. Her predicaments are unbelievable and her actions self centred and insular. World War Two- it feels more like a tiff over the pronunciation of scones at The Ritz between some high society toffs. The sub story of two Jewish children and their fate is as good as any I have ever read. (The fact that I have two children of similar age could be a factor here.) World War Two now feels like a Europe wide sea of blood and fear, where nothing is sacrosanct. A schizophrenic story- as in Birdsong the question that has to be answered is "where was the editor" to cut out all of the romantic pap that drags this book down? I took a look at the reviews of "On Green Dolphin Street"- the editor seems more absent than ever. What a waste of a talented writer.
Rating: 
Summary: A different perspective to World War II
Review: I finished reading Charlotte Gray last night and I woke this morning trying to understand it. I am not sure I understand, still, the narrative relationship of the story of a young, somewhat naive, Scottish girl to that of a group of French villagers struggling to survive under Vichy France. I have not understood Faulks message here. However, this is nevertheless a marvellous book because it presents an aspect of World War II that I had never really thought about before. I was quite ignorant of the complicity of the French towards their German occupiers. This was quite shocking to me. I wish the whole book was set in Vichy and that we did not have to deal with the storyline of Charlotte and Peter Gregory. The real heart of the novel is the story of the Levades and the story of occupied France. I recommend this book to anyone who would be interested in a different insight to the war.
Rating:
Summary: great story, good writing
Review: I think this book was great writing for the most part. The description made me feel a part of the story, I could feel the freezing air going up in the plane with Peter, I was with Charlotte arriving in London for the first time after the blitz, I could almost taste the terrible wartime food. Good writing uses description to give the reader a clear picture of a setting, a character, a situation. Bad writing uses description to fill up paper without serving any other purpose, often giving detail that can be taken for granted. The book gives insight into French and British politics at the time, and how many ordinary people got trapped because of political maneuvering. I learned things I hadn't known about before. There is as much action as in any thriller and I don't see how people find this book boring. It is, however, not a light, fast read. You need to be prepared to give it some time and thought. Julien's character didn't seem to me as convincing as it could have been. If he is in the Resistance, why does he take calls through the switchboard at work from members of the Communist Party and openly discuss roundups of Jews in Paris and the provinces? An operator on a plug-and-cord PBX board can listen to any call just by leaving the key open on the line. Even if French equipment was somewhat different, you would think he'd know better. Worse, if because of his connections he knew as much as the author says about Jews being deported to camps in Poland, and suspected that people were not being sent there to work, it was strange he didn't take more steps to protect his Jewish father. He never even appeared to consider that his father might be in danger. He seemed much too trusting for a Parisian working in the underground. This one possible flaw should not deter anyone from reading the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough Julien
Review: *SPOILERS*
First of all the thing I really hate about romance novels is that the woman tends to end up with the wrong guy. Julien was great, what the hell was Charlotte's problem? She was liberated enough as a woman to go to France despite the danger, but she wasn't liberated enough to shake her self-denial regarding her feelings for Julien and realize this was the guy for her. To hell with Peter, he bored me. I got the impression that in her remark about her and Julien continuing to visit each other after the war she was confessing to wanting to carry on this emotioanl adultary with him. Well, the "crime" begins in the mind, and her constant I want him to keep hugging me, I don't him to stop kissing me, I want to sleep with him again, I've never had a friend like him, is pretty much saying Peter's just an obligation if I don't go back to him I'm a bad cheating woman. Ha. Where's the liberation in that? Yay for Gillian Armstrong having Charlotte going au revoir boring english dude and bonjour Billy with your pretty eyes . . . Anyway, I couldn't cope with Charlotte as a character. Sorry, Faulks, but you don't understand women. This book would have been so much better if Julien had been the main character, just following him around, learning about France during the war, and the characters he interacted with, the gendarme and Benech. I couldn't get enough of that, the details that he threw out to us. I love how he and Beneche were sort of this two man civil war and Julien's compassion for Bernard and his admiration for Henri Petain. He made me feel such pain for the French people. This is Faulk's gift, the humanizing of the history and I think he should use it and not waste his time on whiney chicks (i'm a woman, so I can say that) My favorite scene was where Julien kills Benech. Faulks is great when he gets just a little over the top :) Still, I found interesting symbolism in the book. France seemed to symbolize mankind, Levade God, ect. It's too bad Charlotte ruined the book.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting story about French Resistance in World War II
Review: This is the story of Charlotte Gray, a young woman from Scotland who volunteers to work with a British intelligence organization in support of the French Resistance. The book opens with Charlotte's arrival in London, where she begins working in an unfulfilling job as a secretary in a doctor's office. On her train ride to London, she meets a British intelligence officer who tells her that her fluency with the French language would be a great asset in support of the French resistance movement. At first, Charlotte does not take this opportunity seriously, but when her new beau Peter Gregory is shot down somewhere over France, she decides to volunteer, motivated both by her desire to help the British war effort as well as to find out what happened to Peter. As the story unfolds, her efforts to find Peter fall by the wayside as she becomes more involved in trying to help the French people who are resisting German occupation. Key to the story is the arrest of the parents of two young Jewish boys, efforts by the villagers to hide the boys from the Germans, and their eventual capture. This part of the novel was fascinating. Faulks has obviously done a lot of research into conditions at the holding camps that were set up for Jews in occupied France. The story set in the concentration camp was truly heart-wrenching. Several other reviewers dismissed this book as "pointless". However, I enjoyed it very much. The story was great, and I feel that the message of the book was Charlotte's growth throughout the novel. We first see Charlotte as a rather silly young woman (at the start of the book) whose greatest concern is what cocktail party to attend on a given evening. At the novel's close, she is much more concerned about helping people survive the horrors of war.
Rating:
Summary: intruiging mission, roaring takeoff...splashdown in Channel
Review: I couldn't resist picking up this novel after reading the back cover. A young Scottish woman (Charlotte) follows her downed pilot lover (Peter Gregory) to France as a Secrete SOE-type agent to help the French Resistance, and perhaps even rescue Peter. The plot sounds very intruiging...unfortunately, the author didn't pull it off nearly as well as he could have. Peter Gregory dissapears somewhere over France at the very beginning, and has very little to do with the remainder of the book. He's just sort of gone. Charlotte, in France all because of Peter, doesn't seem to have the passionated motivation to find him that I would have expected. Instead, she finds Julian, a member of the Resistance who develops an attraction to her. And yet she keeps herself unattatched (for the most part). Meanwhile a subplot about two young Jewish boys in hiding develops, abut the main characters have relatively little to do with them...and a depressing subplot it is. Faulks knows how to develop drama in a sweeping-type story, but the story itself felt fragmented, like a bunch of different pieces that didn't completely come together. On the other hand, the material was well-researched (through interviews of real people) and though fictional it was historically accurate. kudos
Rating:
Summary: Charlotte Gray (a lot of nothing ?)
Review: I read Birdsong and enjoyed it. I bought Charlotte Grey hoping for more of the same but was dissapointed. After reading it I was left thinking "what was it all about" ? I think the author has a funny style of writing in that he goes into great detail about things that appear unimportant (even irrelvant) but skips by things which are central to the story (like the capture of the children). In the book the death of the old man in the camp is dealt with in less than a page after being a key character throughout. Whilst reading it I was constanly waiting for something (anything) to happen but sadly it naver did and in the end it fizzled out like a damp firework. I intended to buy the third book in the trilogy but after Charlotte Gray I don't think I'll bother. In summary the book was a lot about nothing
Rating:
Summary: A love story? No way
Review: I thought this book was so good at the begining and enjoyed the first few chapters but then what happened????? She ends up in France looking for some guy she met a few times and it's meant to be some wonderful love story. Who cares! Boring, boring, boring........
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