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Summary: A Heroine of Emotion and Intelligence
Review: Sebastian Faulks gives us a heroine to admire in the title character of Charlotte Gray, a Scottish-English woman drawn into covert intrigue in World War II France. Charlotte, like so many ordinary people, is made remarkable by the war and situations that would be wholly uncommon in peacetime. Her personal resolve to be directly useful to the war effort prompts her to leave her job as a secretary and to become an undercover operative for the British in France. However, it's not the secret identities and undercover maneuverings that most convince the reader of Charlotte's heroism. It's her intense involvement with RAF pilot Peter Gregory who goes missing in action. Without sentimentalizing, she sees her feelings for Gregory as transcendent and is willing to see it through to the end. It's a crazy thing to persist in love in the middle of the war and in the midst of being an undercover operative. Readers well recognize the romantic cliché of women waiting for their lost men. In Charlotte however, our faith is renewed, our jadedness set aside.
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Summary: Dull, dull, dull
Review: This was very dull reading. I had to force myself to finish it. The love story is not at all compelling and the two lovers never had an interesting conversation. With all the opportunities for suspense in this book, there is none. In France, Charlotte disobeys orders to return to England and spends the money alloted her by the SOE on new clothes and panties for herself, instead of helping people in the Resistance. It makes the SOE look incompetent when they praise her for doing a good job. The token "snitch" in the French village is a cliché character. The Jewish story did not work, and Charlotte's hanging out in front of the concentration camp was ludicrous. I suspect this was a "bottom-of-the-drawer" manuscript that the author submitted after the success of "Birdsong." I hope the movie will be better than the book.
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Summary: Poetic Ciphers
Review: There seems to be a great deal of fiction and films being produced about the Second World War at the moment, and the one challenge in such fictions is how to be distinctive from the rest. 'Pearl Harbour', like some other Hollywood films, seems to make it up as it goes along, and appears quite inauthentic, no matter how entertaining. The Second World War is a subject matter that seems far better handled by literary novelists who have a vested interest in getting the historical details right, if Charlotte Gray and Captain Corelli's Mandolin are anything to go by. Indeed, Charlotte Gray is being made into a film as I write, and will hopefully be just as authentic in celluloid. Charlotte Gray is a young Scottish woman who sets off to do her bit by working in a London surgery. On the train, she encounters English golfers Cannerley and Morris. Cannerley seems a bit smitten by Charlotte and decides to chat to her, even giving her his phone number. Events are set in motion when Charlotte reveals that she's fluent in French, and it becomes obvious that Cannerley and Morris are involved in work of a somewhat secretive nature. When Charlotte is out socialising at a literary party in London, she meets RAF pilot Peter Gregory. Unbeknownst to each other, they fall in love. For Charlotte, this isn't a source of great happiness, and Gregory is a little unsure of himself too. Charlotte just knows that she has an inconsolable yearning for Gregory. He is assigned to RAF duties in France, and so needs to brush up on his appalling French. Unfortunately, he does not really take this opportunity to get even closer to Charlotte. Instead, he takes to learning French from the books of Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Faulks is using the benefit of hindsight here, as most readers will know that Saint-Exupery was a French pilot who later died in a crash. The literary party at which Charlotte and Gregory meet is likened to an illustration of Dante's Inferno by Gustav Dore (you know - big demons with wings kind of thing). The otherwise vacuous Daisy is a bit of a poetry reader, and compares Charlotte with a "woman wailing" for her "demon lover" from Coleridge's Kubla Khan. It seems that Gregory is doomed. Sure enough, Gregory doesn't make his way back from France. Charlotte immediately assumes that he's been killed, but his commanders presume he's missing in action, until they hear otherwise. Too many late nights and parties ensures that Charlotte loses her job, but anyway, she has been planning to resign and takes up Cannerley's offer to join the FANY. From there she's drafted into SOE's Section G (in real life, this was Section F). Major Selwyn Jepson seems to have been Faulks' model for the character of Jackson. Charlotte herself is possibly based on Violette Szabo, the most famous FANY recruit, whose story was turned into the film "Carve her Name with Pride". I'm thinking here mainly of Charlotte's romantic motivations to go to France, in a naive bid to try to find Gregory and bring him back. Szabo was involved in the later liberation of France, and ran against the norm of the FANY by not being upper class. Charlotte is sent to France because of her linguistic abilities rather than her fighting skills, and her personal mission seems as deluded as that of the detective in Ishiguro's 'When we were Orphans'. Charlotte learned French when visiting France with her family, with the wounded father who has so mysteriously injured her. The world she saw through the words of Proust has inevitably changed. The occupying German forces have made their mark, most noticeably in a changing of attitudes. There are some of those in Lavaurette who are for the Vichy regime, and some of those who are against. Charlotte is attached to a small resistance cell headed by an architect called Julien in the so-called Free Zone. To her surprise, Charlotte finds that there is not a great deal of support for the British, and it's just as well that SOE has gone to some lengths to disguise her. But there are those who suspect her secret... Charlotte, when she refuses to return to Blightly, lives in the household of Julien's father, the artist Levade. Whilst Charlotte and Julien retrieve parachutes, SOE decides to brutally exploit Charlotte's love for Gregory. Julien has two little secrets to hide himself as Vichy collaborates with the Nazis a little too far. Into the village come the Germans and the Milice, the French SS. Soon there will be departures to Drancy, last stop before Auschwitz. Faulks' historical accuracy is conveyed by the direct quotation of the disgusting Milice oath. He makes his fiction distinctive by looking at life behind the Vichy regime and in the French concentration camps, and explores the concept of what it was like to have the French policed by the French. Meanwhile the Nazis steal everything from the Jews, even Yiddish proverbs like "As happy as God in France". Faulks reveals the kinds of truths that France itself has only started admitting in the nineties (and this is maybe what the subplot with Charlotte's father is all about). As Faulks writes, Pichon is a fictional character, but there were Pichons out there. Inevitably in this kind of book though, Charlotte and Julien become ciphers towards the end as Faulks bids to include all the horrors, but they work for SOE, so they're used to poetic ciphers. Most compelling of all is Faulks' use of hindsight - we know what's going to happen to Andre and Jacob, even if Charlotte proclaims that she does not.
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Summary: ....
Review: ....This bestseller (why?!) reads like a male fantasy as the woman lives, and will happily die, for a man that she doesn't really know. Of course, she's also a virgin before Peter comes along.... Also, having some knowledge of the reality of the Resistance and the FANYs, I found Charlotte's invitation to join and rapid ascent incredible. Did Faulks even interview a woman who had been in this area of the war? A far truer account can be found in "Full Moon to France" - an actual true memoir of an American socialite's amazing heroism in the FANYs and with the French Resistance, which she accomplished despite her own eternal and internal terror. Plus she's gutsy and impetuous and says what she thinks!
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Summary: The best description of the real French resistance
Review: I read Charlotte Gray with great interest. At time it was for me so emotionally upsetting I had to stop reading for a while until I recovered my composure. As a former SOE agent, having been dropped in France during WWII I was faced with some very similar conditions. It brought back to my mine some forgotten incidents. This book may be fiction, but it describes very accurately the real French Resistance and not the one described by Hollywood, or those who wished they had been involved. I was so disappointed with the attitude and the behavior of my former countrymen that I did not return to France for forty years. Charlotte Gray explains why very clearly. Rene J. Defourneaux, Major US Army (Ret.) Author of The Winking Fox, and of The Tracks of the Fox.
Rating:
Summary: a waste
Review: i am astounded by the reviews that i've seen here. i have not picked up a more woodenly characterized, pretentiously written novel in years. i did not care a whit for charlotte or peter, or believe anything about their feeling for each other. the ludicrous efforts to "make themselves worthy of their love for each other" in france had me rolling my eyes. if you want to read a moving, absorbing work on WWII, and specifically women during WWII, pick up "Gone to Soldiers" by Marge Piercy. THAT is worth your time.
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Summary: Faulks has done it again!
Review: Charlotte Gray is a wonderful sequel to Birdsong. It is true that is does not quite reach the emotional intensity of its predecessor, but it is still a great book, thunderously entertaining. Faulks is an inspired writer who can flesh out complex characters in an amazing way. Of course, there were parts of the novel that I liked more than others. I didn't care much about the conflict between Charlotte and her father, or the way it was resolved. I also felt that the pace of the novel is uneven, slow at first but gradually increasing until the frenzy of the last section. Faulks does better when he recreates the atmosphere of the occupied French town. Of all the characters, I found Julien the most interesting, and Andre and Jacob's story completely drained me emotionally. I also loved how Faulks included references and characters from The Girl at the Lion d'Or and Birdsong. For people who would like to know more about the activities of the English SOE agents in France, I heartily recommend reading " A Quiet Courage", by Liane Jones (unfortunately out of print according to Amazon.com). This book is a real account of the activities of the English women sent as agents during World War II to France to help organise French resistance. For an entertaining and involving read, try Charlotte Gray. You won't be disappointed!
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Summary: Close to Reality
Review: Shortly after finishing Charlotte Gray, I saw a BBC programme describing the work of English spies and operatives in France during WWII. I was amazed at the similarities between the book and the programme. The programme merely confirmed what I had already learned from the book.
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Summary: Profound insight into wartime France
Review: Although this book is not as passionate as Birdsong, and is certainly no war thriller, Faulkes nonetheless brings over very successfully the sinister reality of life in occupied France, and contrasts it well with life in wartime Britain. He gives us a powerful insight into the ease with which many people in France could justify to themselves acquiesence to the Nazi regime and the deportation of Jews. (We are forced to ask ourselves - would we have been any different?) At the same time, Faulkes shows us the heartrending reality of the Jews' suffering - the scene as the children were taken to the concentration camp brought tears to my eyes. I highly recommend the book - read Birdsong first, so that you understand the link with WW1 and Charlotte's father.
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Summary: A summer read, when you don't have to worry about time...
Review: Faulks' flawed and interesting novel can occupy your vacation time, while you are at the beach and have nothing else to do. One young lady who read this book said that it made her "cross," because the heroine seems so dippy and ineffectual. Another person said that the book lapses unrealistically in its description of spying and the French Resistance. Yet a third friend said that the father-daughter "trauma" and the concentration camp overlay were unnecessary or out of place. True, you will not be disturbed by strong women or reality in this book. Still, this is a good book for your vacation time, schmaltzy and frothy and not too bad, unless you happen to require strong, unselfconcious women in your novels. This is not Jane Austin or Tom Clancy, but I liked it, anyway, on a hot summer day.
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