Charlotte Gray

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.

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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: 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: 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: 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.