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Charlotte Gray
 
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Charlotte Gray (Paperback)

by Sebastian Faulks (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (76 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (24 Jan 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099428342
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099428343
  • Product Dimensions: 17.4 x 11 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 372,919 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #28 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > F > Faulks, Sebastian

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Product Description

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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review
British reviewers' praise for Charlotte Gray:
"It would take a mile-long essay to do justice to the many virtues of Sebastian Faulks's wonderful new novel. This riveting account of a young Scotswoman's odyssey through wartime London, and on into a perilous secret mission in Vichy France, deserves the highest praise. . . . Proustian cogitations, masterful narrative, and zestful pen portraits. A beautiful, near-masterpiece."--The Independent on Sunday
"One of the most impressive novelists of his generation . . . who is growing in authority with every book."
--Sunday Telegraph
"A worthy successor to Birdsong. It is hard to imagine anyone who enjoyed the last novel not finding great interest and pleasure in this one. In Charlotte, Faulks has created a wonderfully complex and engaging heroine, with whom it is hard not to fall a little in love."--Daily Express
"Faulks has the rare gift of being popular and literary at the same time. Its page-turning quality in no way undermines the darkness that it describes."--Literary Review
"Faulks is beyond doubt a master."--Financial Times

Praise for Birdsong:
"Overpowering and beautiful . . . A great novel."--Simon Schama, The New Yorker
"The ordinary superlatives do not suffice in this case. Birdsong moved me more profoundly than anything I've read in years. A deeply compassionate, utterly thrilling work by a master of the form."--Frank Conroy
"Worthy in every way of its honors and success . . . so powerful as to be almost unbearable."--George Garrett, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A contemporary novel that . . . earns a place on the shelf with true literature. . . . Superb storytelling andcraftsmanship."--People

"From the Hardcover edition."

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Charlotte Gray
74% buy the item featured on this page:
Charlotte Gray 3.6 out of 5 stars (76)
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Customer Reviews

76 Reviews
5 star:
 (24)
4 star:
 (22)
3 star:
 (12)
2 star:
 (13)
1 star:
 (5)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (76 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Much better than Birdsong, 18 Mar 2002
By A Customer
I seem to be alone in not finding Birdsong the most marvellous book ever - possibly because I read it just after Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, which I found much more involving.

The problem I had with Birdsong was that, when reading about an event in which millions of people died, I find it hard to care about a single love affair. It is very difficult to write about such tragic and all-consuming world events without reducing the love lives of two single people to triviality.

Charlotte Grey somehow transcended this, making the love plot both moving, involving and seemingly symbolic of all the hope and suffering that participants in the war must have experienced. The beautiful writing and marvellously realised, convincing and sympathetic characters give the affair a sense of universality. Even against the grim and traumatic backdrop of the Vichy government's collaberation with the Germans and their seemingly enthusiastic participation in the persecution of the Jews, Charlotte's love affair and her struggle for personal happiness seem both engrossing and important.

On top of that, I found it a real page-turner - couldn't stop reading it. Great, great book.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Rich but deeply disturbing - not for the faint-hearted, 7 Sep 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Charlotte Gray (Paperback)
Having only ever read (and enjoyed) Faulks' "Birdsong" before I looked forward to meeting Charlotte Gray. I was not disappointed.

This is a moving and disturbing story of one young woman's experiences as an undercover courier in France during the 1940's. Charlotte comes over almost as an anti-hero, she is at once sophisticated yet naive, caring yet callous, brave yet timid (or foolhardy?). Although the main plot revolves around her attempts to track down her English lover, reported as missing in action after being shot down over France, this is NOT a love story. The imagery created by the narrative puts you deep in the heart of war-torn France, with all the personal conflicts and emotions of the people involved on all sides. The sub-plot around the two Jewish boys, tragically separated from their parents ... is the most moving part of the book. Told through their eyes, we feel their innocence and the way they instinctively trust and follow any adult they come into contact with, secure in the mistaken belief that they will one day be reunited with their parents. WE know what is happening to them - THEY don't. Their final scene ... almost made me cry. We should all be ashamed of man's inhumanity to man at times of war. Charlotte too, in tracing the boys to a "work camp", herself naively believes that the boys will only to put to work. We never know if she realises at the end exactly how far from the truth she was ...

The book's only flaw is the half-hearted attempt to examine Charlotte's relationship with her father. I felt it had no real bearing on the development of her character ...

All in all, a great read. But prepare to be traumatised, and have some misconceptions about the French Resistance movement shattered.

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Another view of Occupied France..., 18 Jun 2001
By rdmills@lineone.net (East Yorkshire,England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Charlotte Gray (Paperback)
I bought this book for the author rather than the story, 'Birdsong' being one of the most powerful books I have ever had the pleasure to read. It certainly is a different kind of story (and War) and I only realised the connection with one of the Birdsong characters when I was well into this book. I cannot say I found it a riveting read for most of the book, but what comes across strongly is the internal struggle in France during the Second World War,not so much with the Occupier, but between the French themselves. This manifests itself in Charlotte Gray's dealings with individuals and the various factions, all of whom seem to have different agendas. Most hate the Germans, some the British, and some their own French countrymen.I had never appreciated the division and strength of feeling, and ultimately what it did to some, namely the Jewish people. What builds to an inevitible and awful conclusion in the last 50 or so pages of the book, eclipses the rest to the extent that nothing else seemed to have happened. It brings the Holocaust down to an individual level where the suffering is almost too much to contemplate, and focuses on three people, two of them young children, amongst the tide of humanity caught up in that horrendous and dark period of our social history. This is but a small part of the book, but will remain in one's mind for a long time.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but only great in parts
Most of this was good and well written, though not on a par with the great Birdsong. However, the last third or so was more dramatic and harrowing, especially the fate of M... Read more
Published 1 month ago by John Hopper

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Riveting
Charlotte Gray, first published in 1998, is a riveting novel set at the time of the Second World War which was subsequently made into a movie starring Cate Blanchett. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Leyla Sanai

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, wonderful read....
This book held me from beginning to end. Superbly written with authentic details. A book full of the reality and tragedy of the last war, mixed with humility and wonderfully... Read more
Published 5 months ago by D. Thalmann

2.0 out of 5 stars Another love Stroy.
Mr Faulks is a right old romantic with a penchant for raunchy sex as we saw in Birdsong. That's ok but gets in the way of a good tale about partying in wartime London, training... Read more
Published 5 months ago by J. D. Mcintosh

3.0 out of 5 stars Left me curiously unmoved...
I had high hopes for this book, because I absolutely loved Birdsong, but I found it left me rather unmoved. Read more
Published 9 months ago by C. Ball

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book about WWII I have read
This is a terrific book - difficult to put down and a real literary achievement. It is fundamentally a romance set against a backdrop of war but is much more than that in... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mr. J. P. Shields

5.0 out of 5 stars Still haunts me on the second reading
I read first read this book in my late teens and it haunted me then and brought with it a greater appreciation for literature that has stayed with me ever since. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Freya Freeman

4.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more
Published 12 months ago by John Holland

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving journey
Having recently read and admired 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks, I was keen to read Charlotte Gray. I loved it. Read more
Published 13 months ago by L. H. Healy

4.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Lotus Eater

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