Charlotte Gray

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time.
Review: Having loved "Birdsong", I was eager to read Faulks' new book and even bought it in hardcover when it was published in England. What a waste of money! I only managed to read 100 pages of it before I became completely fed-up. The depictions of life in Vichy France may have been interesting, but the main character just irritated me too much. It was too ludicrous to believe that someone as insecure and vacuous as Charlotte Gray would ever be employed as a WWII spy. If you enjoyed "Birdsong", I'd recommend "A Very Long Engagement" by Sebastien Japrisot. Don't waste your time with Charlotte Gray!

Rating:
Summary: great story - terrible character development
Review: i loved how faulks reveals the truth about life under Vichy during wwII. But both charlotte and the RAF pilot (whose character is so flat and invisible his name doesnt even matter) are both so unreal and passionless that the book left me cold Birdsong is one of my favorite books in my whole life - but i cant recommend this one.

Rating:
Summary: stays with you long after you have finished reading
Review: I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in a good book and curiosity about what life was like for many during WWII. It makes a time which we can only experience through black and white photographs and the memories of our grandparents stunning vivid and real. The characters were memorable. The details of daily life under Vichy exploded the myth that resistance was in the heart of every citizen. At the same time chilling, interesting and beautifully written.

Rating:
Summary: Vichy France-A new look?
Review: The writing is superb,the romance touching,and the 'plot' novel-but to me a new look at Vichy 'Unoccupied' France.The description of the 'Holocaust' in France is chilling. It should be required reading for everyone to understand the horror of Nazi genocide,a grim story in France,relatively untouched for 50 years?

Rating:
Summary: Good story but dull characters
Review: I agree with the other reviewers who said the characters were dull. I felt compelled to finish the book, but it was the story itself that intrigued me. I kept hoping Charlotte and others would come to life and display some passion, but it was never to be. The only part of the story which touched me and was heartbreakingly sad, was the fate of the two little brothers who were killed in the camp at Drancy. This book never came close to the author's previous offering, Birdsong.

Rating:
Summary: A grotesque mess of a novel
Review: In this book we have a Mary Wesley-inspired love affair between a 25-year-old Scottish girl and an RAF pilot in WWII London; and a John Le Carre-inspired spy story. Although there are brief sections of fine and compelling writing, Faulks doesn't handle either the love affair or the spy story as well as Wesley or Le Carre. But the novel plunges into a different realm when Faulks introduces a William Styron "Sophie's Choice" element with a tale of two young Jewish brothers fleeing the Nazis. Their story is so compelling and sad and real that it makes the love affair and the preoccupations of Charlotte Gray seem trivial and silly. She becomes intent on getting a message to an old man in a concentration camp but seems not to care about the boys' fate. This novel needed a good editor to shape it into a first-class read, which it could have been. Instead it's long, boring and, ultimately, trivial and offensive.

Rating:
Summary: A bit of a disappointment after "Birdsong"
Review: "Birdsong" was one of my favourite books so I was looking forward to reading "Charlotte Gray".To say that it is not in the same league as "Birdsong" is an understatement-it is almost as if it was written by a different author.I thought the characters were shallow and the dialogue at times unbelievable.Faulks will have to try harder-he can't trade on the success of "Birdsong" forever.The only reason I gave it 2 stars was that as a Scot living in France,the background details of the German occupation were quite interesting.

Rating:
Summary: A sorry disappointment
Review: Faulks probably made most of his royalties from me INSISTING to friends that they buy Birdsong. I LOVED that book with a passion, and so swooped on Charlotte Grey. I found it utterly uninvolving, the characters as flat as the pages they were written on and the plot had no ability to hold me. I was SOOOO disappointed. I look forward to the next Faulks with some apprehension.

Rating:
Summary: After the intensity of Birdsong, flat and disappointing.
Review: Despite the no doubt accurate descriptions of wartime covert operations behind enemy lines, and the deprivations and humiliations of life in Vichy France, these are the best parts of the book. Charlotte Gray herself is not a particularly interesting character and her love affair with a RAF pilot somewhat Mills & Boonish. I found her travels through occupied France rather unlikely. Not really in the same class as Birdsong.

Rating:
Summary: disappointing:signs of hasty & sloppy plotting
Review: Was Faulks being pushed by his publisher to produce the book in time for XMAS 1998? Not one character lived on the page, not even the main protagonists. An episode that would have occupied a chapter in BIRDSONG is covered by one paragraph of reported action in the pluperfect tense. The events described in the book are improbable in the extreme. I would not have employed Charlotte Gray if I had been her spymaster.