Customer Reviews
Left me curiously unmoved... - By: C. Ball, 21 Sep 2008 
I had high hopes for this book, because I absolutely loved Birdsong, but I found it left me rather unmoved. It's written in what seems, to me at least, to be a curiously detached style & it didn't seem to reallly penetrate beneath the surface of the characters. Even amidst the danger of Occupied France, SS officers on trains, children being sent to concentration camps, the collaboration & resistance of the French, I never reallly cared very much about what happened to the characters. The one part that did affect me, the two young boys being sent to the gas chambers, was less about the specific fate of those two characters & more about the actual fate of the children who reallly were killed in the Holocaust. So, a disappointment, I would say.
Best book about WWII I have read - By: Mr. J. P. Shields, 11 Aug 2008 
This is a terrific book - difficult to put down & a real literary achievement. It is fundamentallly a romance set against a backdrop of war but is much more than that in reality.
Not an easy read in terms of its subject matter as it deals with the worst aspects of Nazi atrocities as well as the bravery, clever scheming & misguided realpolitick of the Allies.
Those in France involved with resisting the Reich are not forgotten, as are those who embraced the regime brought by their occupiers.
I cannot think of anything negative to say about it. It doesn't pull any punches in describing the ludicrous propaganda used by the Vichy government & rightly so.
The book is about love & how it drives people as much as "the horror the horror".
As good as Birdsong, maybe better.
Still haunts me on the second reading - By: Freya Freeman, 06 Aug 2008 I read first read this book in my late teens & it haunted me then & brought with it a greater appreciation for literature that has stayed with me ever since. I decided to re-read Charlotte Gray now in my mid twenties & wasn't sure about how I would feel upon re-reading it.
Happily, I was swept away again. Charlotte is a very likeable character & Faulks manages to evoke romance & passion without any sense of sentimentality. I loved the characters of Levade & Julien & felt that they bring an extra depth to the story, enabling us to see Charlotte's strengths & passions.
It is a book that may teach you more about history & breaks down the barriers of time. Often books are either about war, or about love but this one manages to combine both without overshadowing the plot.
I feel Faulks is a beautifully haunting & transporting writer & this book will remain in my list of favourites forever.
A moving book set in wartime France - By: John Holland, 05 Jul 2008 
Charlotte is a British spy sent into France in 1942, trained by the government to liaise with the resistance & 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 & make contact.
This love story is contrasted with the backdrop of war - the brutal treatment of Jews by the Vichy government & many of the French characters. The destruction of property & human life is captured in text that fully portrays the grim reality. Focussing on two Jewish children brings home the awful consequences of genocide, & 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 & 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 & moving read.
A moving journey - By: L. H. Healy, 27 May 2008 Having recently read & 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, & one of whom she fallls in love with, & it becomes her destiny to follow him to France. But on arriving in France & 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, & his son Julien who is bravely battling in one of the Resistance movements, & with whom Charlotte finds a true & enduring friendship unlike anything in her past. Through the novel we learn of the events over in France during these 'dark' times, & to discover more about the ways of their then leaders & their complicity with the Germans in rounding up Jews is startling. It is extremely moving & disquieting to read the passages about first Levade, & then the children, as they meet their horrific & appallling fates. Faulkes is a masterly storyteller, & succeeds here in crafting an enthrallling, moving novel which I could not put down for long, & which I would like to read again one day.
