Product Description

In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young Scottish woman, heads for Occupied France on a dual mission - officially, to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and unofficially to search for her lover, an English airman missing in action.As the people in the small town of Lavaurette prepare to meet their terrible destiny, the harrowing truth of what took place in `the dark years' is finally revealed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3758 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sebastian Faulks established his authority as a storyteller with his best-selling Birdsong. His next book, Charlotte Gray, a haunting story of love and war set in London and occupied France in 1942-3, is loosely a sequel. Charlotte is a highly educated young Scottish woman who falls passionately in love with an airman, Peter Gregory, emotionally scarred by his many close brushes with death. When he disappears on a mission to France, she follows him as a British secret courier, sent over to help support the Resistance. Having failed to find Gregory, she decides to stay on to do what she can for the France she has loved since childhood. She and the reader are drawn ever deeper into the lives of assimilated French Jews-- the children Andre and Jacob whose parents have already been sent to the death camps, and the Levades, father and son. Though ultimately powerless to help, Charlotte nevertheless learns a far deeper understanding of herself and her own family through them.

This is a book full of insight into the way civilisation can slip into barbarism. Its haunting themes of memory and passion stay with you long after you have finished reading. --Lisa Jardine

Daily Mail
`A brilliant, harrowing, powerful novel'

Independent on Sunday
`…deserves the highest praise…masterful narrative and zestful pen-portraits. A beautiful near-masterpiece'

Customer Reviews

A moving book set in wartime France
Charlotte is a British spy sent into France in 1942, trained by the government to liaise with the resistance and pass messages. Secretly she is hoping to make contact with her lover, who has gone missing during a routine flight to France. She uses the resistance to try to establish his location and make contact.
This love story is contrasted with the backdrop of war - the brutal treatment of Jews by the Vichy government and many of the French characters. The destruction of property and human life is captured in text that fully portrays the grim reality. Focussing on two Jewish children brings home the awful consequences of genocide, and regularly brought tears to my eyes. The descriptions were so real that I could see my own children following those footsteps.
Maybe my slight criticism is that Charlotte's story and the Jewish stories don't seem to stick together. There is too much comment on French wartime behaviour for the novel to completely gel. But still a fine and moving read.

A moving journey
Having recently read and admired 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks, I was keen to read Charlotte Gray. I loved it.
What a fascinating, at times terrifying journey she undertakes! We follow her journey from Scotland as she heads south to London to do her bit for the war effort, meeting various people who each alter the course of her life, and one of whom she falls in love with, and it becomes her destiny to follow him to France. But on arriving in France and uncovering the truth of the situation there for some of the people, her mission takes on a much broader purpose as she seeks to mend or at least temporarily 'patch-up' the heartaches in the lives of some of those she encounters.

It is beautifully written, with wonderful characters like the old man Charlotte looks after for a time in France, Levade, and his son Julien who is bravely battling in one of the Resistance movements, and with whom Charlotte finds a true and enduring friendship unlike anything in her past. Through the novel we learn of the events over in France during these 'dark' times, and to discover more about the ways of their then leaders and their complicity with the Germans in rounding up Jews is startling. It is extremely moving and disquieting to read the passages about first Levade, and then the children, as they meet their horrific and appalling fates. Faulkes is a masterly storyteller, and succeeds here in crafting an enthralling, moving novel which I could not put down for long, and which I would like to read again one day.

Never Forget!
This, again, was a second reading and well worth it. Had I not read it directly after revisiting 'Birdsong', I would probably have rated it 5 stars. Birdsong, however, is one of the best novels I've ever read, and although CG is very good, it does pale a little by comparison. Charlotte Gray is the daughter of Colonel Gray, Stephen Wraysford's superior officer in Birdsong and this is the main connection between the two novels. Other reviewers here have already given very worthy comment on this novel, but I would like to add that the overwhelming feeling it left me with was that we must never forget what man did to fellow man - the fact that human beings are capable of such evil. I would thoroughly recommend this book - it's a harrowing, but gripping tale of wartime France and serves as a very real reminder.