Charlotte Gray

I found that this novel not only held my attention, but continued to reveal inself more and more as the story evolves. It is certainly not up front about the sybolism and themes, but once given the chance it becomes a story worth examining. Core issues such as WWII, the holocaust, racial and ethnic identification, and personal discovery, are addressed in a well intertwined manner. Through a story about self-discovery the reader gets to see these aspects of history through several peoples eyes. Certainly worth one's time, and the story picks up momentum as one reads! Couldn't put it down, one of the best ive read this year.

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.

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.

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.

I read Charlotte Gray with great interest. At time it was for me so emotionally upsetting I had to stop reading for a while until I recovered my composure. As a former SOE agent, having been dropped in France during WWII I was faced with some very similar conditions. It brought back to my mine some forgotten incidents. This book may be fiction, but it describes very accurately the real French Resistance and not the one described by Hollywood, or those who wished they had been involved. I was so disappointed with the attitude and the behavior of my former countrymen that I did not return to France for forty years. Charlotte Gray explains why very clearly.Rene J. Defourneaux, Major US Army (Ret.) Author of The Winking Fox, and of The Tracks of the Fox.