In his 1996 novel, Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks showed himself to be a superb anatomist of men--and, just as importantly, women--at war. Indeed, his depiction of trench combat during World War I was almost painfully vivid: the equivalent of Wilfred Owen in prose, minus the lingering idealism. Now the author shifts his focus to the next global conflict in Charlotte Gray. This time the year is 1942, when "England was blacked out and afraid." The 25-year-old heroine has just traveled down from Edinburgh to London, hoping to make some contribution to the war effort. In short order she falls in love with a British pilot, mourns his disappearance and apparent death in France, and follows him across the Channel to assist the nascent French Resistance.
On the face of it, these are the ingredients of a historical potboiler. But Faulks is such a gifted storyteller that we seldom notice the threadbare nature of the raw material. Instead, all but the most churlish reader will be drawn into Charlotte's tribulations, which are not merely geopolitical but amorous: "The last thing she needed was some uncontrolled romance. She wanted to be helpful, she wanted to lead a serious life, not to lie sobbing in her bed for a disembodied yearning. Still less did she wish to see it embodied, with the complication and the fear that all that would entail." (Note: Charlotte is that rare thing, a virginal heroine, at least until page 61.) What's more, the author's evocation of Occupied France is a triumph of grimy, monochromatic realism. Here the small triumphs of Charlotte and her circle are expertly offset by the larger tragedies of what we've come to call, with only middling accuracy, the Good War. --William Davies
Mr. Faulks takes us on a spellbinding trip into the depths of the French underground in a totally beliveable, absobing tale. We follow an ordinary young woman caught up in extraordinary situation and live though it alonside her hour by hour day by day. If you are looking for other stories of common people finding courage watch for Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II by Douglas W Jacobson coming in October 2007.
You can only go so wrong with Sebastian Faulks, as his books are always beautifully written, touching, intense and melancholy.
However, this one was just a little too epic for me i.e. it could have done with being a little bit shorter and a little less convoluted.
Maybe to some extent it was the setting (World War 2, Occupied France) that didn't do it for me, but I didn't really lose myself in, or find it impossible to tear myself away from, this novel as I had with some of Faulks' other work.
If you've read his other work, by all means do read this too, but if you're looking for an introduction to Faulks, I'd go with Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War or On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel first.
I consider Sebastian Faulks' BIRDSONG the best novel I have ever read about World War I, so I had high hopes for this one set in WW2. Alas, they were only partially fulfilled, but I enjoyed the book nonetheless, and know I would have enjoyed it even more if it had not had that earlier masterpiece to live up to.
Once again, the principal setting is wartime France, a country that Faulks knows well. And once again, the central plot device involves two lovers separated by the war. In BIRDSONG, that was mainly a background for the harrowing portrayal of the male character in the trenches; in CHARLOTTE GRAY, it is the female character of the title who occupies most of the attention, and the setting is rural France rather than the front. Dropped into a small village in the Massif Central, Charlotte liaises with the fledgeling local resistance while attempting to search for her lover, Peter Gregory, a pilot lost on a previous mission. The book offers a believable portrait of the early years of Vichy France, before the Resistance gained much momentum. According to Faulks, few saw the Allies as eventual liberators, but rather almost as enemies, disturbing their pragmatic accommodation with the occupying power. This gives an air of seeming normality to the portrayal of village life which may ring true but which slows the narrative by depriving it of sufficent sense of danger.
The Washington Post review quoted inside the book says "What begins as a conventional love story becomes an adventure of the spirit." It is a good description. The love story IS rather conventional and Charlotte at first seems naively romantic. The process by which she is recruited as a courier and sent to France seems altogether too casual, as though introduced as a narrative adjunct to the romance rather than as something that will become the main focus of the book. Various other subplots and characters are added, as for example a Machiavellian attempt by one secret agency to discredit another, but they are not followed through. After some time has passed, the focus of Charlotte's life in France seems to become almost entirely romantic, as she struggles to maintain her feelings for Peter against the complication of her differing relationships with other men whom she meets in the village.
But the "adventure of the spirit" does eventually come through, although rather late in the book. The Germans take over the Free Zone and slowly the true horror gathers momentum. By this time, Charlotte's quest for Peter is no longer the main narrative thread. Faulks increasingly pulls back, showing short episodes from many different points of view. These include a developing subplot involving a French collaborator, some harrowing scenes set in the Jewish transit camp at Drancy, and two father figures warped by traumatic memories of the first War (a recurrent theme with Faulks). But by now the novel has become too loosely structured to work completely, its final chapters seem almost an afterthought, and its endings too easily arrived at.
