Charlotte Gray

Rating:
Summary: A Chilling Truth Of The Holocaust Rarely Bettered
Review: The story of Charlotte is peripheral to the eventual all-pervading horror of the treatment of Andre and Jacob. In its never-ending awfulness, you want, desperately, to reach into the book and save them. Of course you cannot and so are but a helpless observer as they pass from one hell to a worse one and then on to their deaths. I have never felt so emotionally drained by a book. I now carry these images with me. I wish I didn't but I know I, and everyone else, should. The final 150 pages are very difficult to come to terms with. But then, why should we ever find it easy to come to terms with genocide?
"It's only a story," someone said to me. Except, of course, it is anything but.

Rating:
Summary: Mysterious
Review: This is a book full of secrets dreams and visions.
The secret I can't uncover is: What is the meaning of the last line in the last paragraph?
Please enlighten.

Rating:
Summary: It Just Works.
Review: Jam-packed with twists and turns, Sebastian Faulks' `Charlotte Gray' is definitely a worthwhile. I'll admit I was, at first, sceptical about reading the book, as I feared it would be another demeaning drama about some poor distressed damsel during the war, however, I was honestly taken back by Charlotte's independence, determination and inspirational courage.
Rife with emotional intensity and interesting plots, it was a pleasure to travel with her to France where she hoped to assist in the revolution while searching for Gregory, her lover, a British who is presumed dead by all but the ever-hopeful Charlotte. In France, the plot divides in two, on one hand we follow the trials and tribulations of Charlotte, and on the other we take an in-depth look at WWII in occupied France.
This book provides a stark but accurate picture of the horrors of the Holocaust, without taking from Charlotte's own personal predicaments. I've actually read it three times now, and on every occasion I've discovered some new detail or aspect that has kept me constantly enthralled. You should read this book; it's not just a worthwhile read - it's an experience.


Rating:
Summary: Not as good as I hoped
Review: I Love books set in war-time, so it seem natural to read "Charlotte Gray" by Sebastian Faulks. Well I finished it all that I can say that it seem uninspiring to me.
Charlotte Gray is a young Scottish woman who moves to London during the war to work, after meeting and quickly falling in love with a pilot, who then quickly get shot down over France. Charlotte who of course can speak near-perfect French, decides to become a spy and go to France to find her pilot/lover. While in France she get invovled with a resistance leader.
Mr. Faulks seems to make everyone but Charlotte flawed and of course everything is easy for Charlotte to get to France to find her love. There are better war-time books out there and its not "Charlotte Gray."

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: Not enough Julien
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